Popular quotes about Letters! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 71
Another thing I like to say to my students is this: "How many Corinthians read Paul's letters?" The answer is none. They couldn't have cared less! There aren't even any Corinthians left, but Paul's letters persist. Paul was not a professional writer. He was called to something, and he sent his letters. That's a good way to look at it. That you might be making something that nobody cares about, but you have to do it. It's not that people should care, but that you should care.
Jamaica KincaidI have always been a writer of letters, and of long ones; so, when I first thought of writing a book in the form of letters, I knew that I could do it quickly and easily.
Laurence HousmanI had a fan who had a fictional relationship with me. She wrote letters to me and then wrote return letters to herself (from me). In her mind, we were married and had two children. Her parents finally uncovered this delusional life she was living and she got help.
Matthew McConaugheyThe creation of all those symbols and logotypes which are an ever more striking feature of the world in which we live calls for a new and fresh approach to lettering in the part of the designer. In these logotypes the combination of letters can be more or less obvious; but only deliberately contrived encounters of elements and confrontations of values can lead beyond the letters to new forms of expression.
Armin HofmannA well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. But they can't buy that because the word doesn't exist in Time-style; he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist.
Paul GoodmanAlongside my "no email" policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.
Tom HodgkinsonIn the First World War, people would be receiving letters from loved ones who had been dead for weeks, and they would not know until that black-bordered telegram arrived. I remember, of course, when it was letters only, or the telephone, and you did not make expensive long-distance calls unless it was, "Come home to the funeral," or the like.
Margaret AtwoodLOVE LETTERS TO YOURSELF This is taken from a love letter (a gentle reminder) I wrote to myself recently. Live in your joy today. Be authentic. Love yourself. First. Love others from your own abundance. Life Changes. Circumstances change. Sometimes you try to fit your old way of being into new circumstances rather than becoming new yourself. Embrace transformation as an opportunity. And keep on writing love letters to yourself.
Mary Anne RadmacherI really think kids should understand that music is like learning the alphabet. You put small letters together to make words, and then you use these words to create a story, but with music. And they really need to know how to mix and match those letters and how to come up with something that is really interesting, or speak in metaphors as poets do to show us something maybe we didn't think about.
Terry BozzioFor fiction, Im not particularly nationalistic. Im not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.
Daniel AlarconAlgebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together.
Mal PeetUntil very recently, most knowledge was inaccessible to people who couldn't read text. But this is changing. The computer opens up other channels of gaining knowledge. If someone is blind, we now have very good machines that will read to him. If someone can't recognize letters, he also will have access to knowledge through sound and images.
Seymour PapertThe worst letters come from retired high school English teachers. They will literally take a book and pick it to pieces and send me 14 pages of notes.
John GrishamDoth not all nature around me praise God? If I were silent, I should be an exception to the universe. Doth not the thunder praise Him as it rolls like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not the mountains praise Him when the woods upon their summits wave in adoration? Doth not the lightning write His name in letters of fire? Hath not the whole earth a voice? And shall I, can I, silent be?
Charles SpurgeonWherever I go, I'll always see you. You'll always be with me. And there's no happy ending coming here, no way a story that started on a night that's burned into my heart will end the way I wish it could. You're really gone, no last words, and no matter how many letters I write to you, you're never going to reply. You're never going to say good-bye. So I will. Good-bye, Julia. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being you.
Elizabeth ScottSurely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid?
Jiddu KrishnamurtiI mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can't answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.
Henry RollinsDid you really JUST fall, Jeffrey? Why does everybody in my family talk in these dramatic CAPITAL LETTERS all the time? Why am I the only calm one?
Jordan SonnenblickThe only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English. Then I'd be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters like N and T.
Scott McNealyMost personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.
Robert BenchleyThis is the worst problem with living history museums. They always leave the best parts out. Like typhus. And opium. And scarlet letters. Shunning. Witch-burning.
Chuck PalahniukI didn't mean to send love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page.
Lisa KleypasEva [Braun] liked to write cards and letters, she spent a great deal of time on this. She had lovely writing, lovely sets of stationary and she spent hours a day on her correspondence, at least later on.
Gretl BraunThe nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. The boys have gone hog-wild with liberty, yet the short flat terms used over and over, both in dialogue and narrative, add neither vigor nor clarity; the effect is not of shock but of something far more dangerous โ tedium.
Dorothy ParkerMr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come to the joint conclusion that the purpose of writing fiction was โa way out of loneliness.โ (NY Times article on the memorial service of David Foster Wallace.)
Jonathan FranzenSince I was 20 years old, I've been a kind of corporation. I'd wake up in the morning and my job was to be 'Bonnie Raitt' in capital letters.
Bonnie RaittI received thousands of letters of support from all around the world, all because I wanted to go to school.
Ryan WhitePeople were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.
Rachel JoyceYou could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove.
Ted HughesThe other thing that I got back then - the Parker novels have never had much of anything to do with race. There have been a few black characters here and there, but the first batch of books back then, I got a lot of letters from urban black guys in their 20s, 30s, 40s. What were they seeing that they were reacting to? And I think I finally figured it out - at that time, they were guys who felt very excluded from society, that they had been rejected by the greater American world.
Donald E. WestlakeFeedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.
Brian AldissHow do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, 'How many people are writing this guy handwritten letters? Is it going to seem cheesy? What do I do?'
Jennifer LawrenceThe man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only a single side of our complex and many-sided being.
James G. FrazerOf all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.
A. N. WilsonHe read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g's the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son.
J. K. RowlingIn my heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect and reverence, but there is no question of my pleasure and pride in having it for myself.
John SteinbeckIt was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.
Haruki MurakamiI love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.
Rainer Maria RilkeTo be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.
David HumeStranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!
Edna St. Vincent MillayPeople were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.
Charles BukowskiI get letters from [people getting insurance] right now. "You saved my child's life." "I did not have to sell my home when my wife got sick." And that is what, as a policy maker, I'm trying to achieve during the short period of time that I'm here.
Barack ObamaSpread the glad tidings that it will not disappoint Miss Heyer's many admirers. Judging from the letters I've received from obviously feeble-minded persons who do so wish I would write another These Old Shades, it ought to sell like hot cakes. I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense, but it's questionably good escapist literature and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter, or recovering from flu. Its period detail is good; my husband says it's witty---and without going to these lengths, I will say that it is very good fun.
Georgette HeyerI get a lot of letters. Not only from children but from adults, too. Almost every week, every month, clippings come in from some part of the world where ducks are crossing the street.
Robert McCloskeyI am a painter with letters. I want to restore everything, mix everything up and say everything.
Jean-Luc GodardLongevity in my family's been pretty good. And my grandparents were pretty spry at their age, so I figured I'd probably stay skinny and fairly agile. I used to do old men all the time in sketches. And there used to be an organization called the Gray Panthers. And they would send me, oh, terrible letters about making fun of old people. And I would just always say, "I'm playing the old person I intend to become!"
Dick Van Dyke