"I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses."

-- Walter Jon Williams

#Writing Quotes #College Quotes

“I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it shall be behind me.”

Source : Quoted in Nicholas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time (1953). Cassell's Humorous Quotations suggests that an earlier version of this jab appeared in a letter by the Fourth Earl of Sandwich in 1785, but no such anecdote is found in the book said to be the source.
“A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him.”
“For better or worse, I seem to gravitate toward writing about something or someone else, then have my own self shove its way into that story. It seems insanely narcissistic. But I also think there's a particular effect that comes from using my autobiography in service to another story, as opposed to being the subject. I'm much more comfortable working in that mode. And I do think I have a persona or mood that I keep coming back to: self-conscious, self-critical, unsure. I write a lot about bodies, particularly male ones, usually as a point of emphasis for my insecurities about my own.”
“The steam-engine in its manifold applications, the crime-decreasing gas-lamp, the lightning conductor, the electric telegraph, the law of storms and rules for the mariner's guidance in them, the power of rendering surgical operations painless, the measures for preserving public health, and for preventing or mitigating epidemics,-such are among the more important practical results of pure scientific research, with which mankind have been blessed and States enriched.”
“Though we [Humanists] take a strict position on what constitutes knowledge, we are not critical of the source of ideas. Often intuitive feelings, hunches, speculation, and flashes of inspiration prove to be excellent sources of novel approaches, new ways of looking at things, new discoveries, and new information. We do not disparage those ideas derived from religious experience, altered states of consciousness, or the emotions; we merely declare that testing these ideas against reality is the only way to determine their validity as knowledge.”
“The key is to keep improving. I'm not there yet. I know I have to keep trying to improve and keep trying to get faster.”
“The goal you set must be challenging. At the same time, it should be realistic and attainable, not impossible to reach. It should be challenging enough to make you stretch, but not so far that you break.”

Source : Rick Hansen, Joan Laub (1994). “Going the distance: 7 steps to personal change”
“There's nothing wrong with stretching the truth. We stretch taffy, and that just makes it more delicious.”

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