The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought,...
All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.
The letter I received said you had need of my particular talents, but I must confess that I have so many talents that I am not sure which one you require.
I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. ; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age wo...
It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.
Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 dra...
Words form the sinew and muscle that hold societies upright, he argued. Consider the Koran, the Bible, the American Constitution, but also letters from fathers to sons, last wills, blessings, curses. Thousands upon thousands of words infused with the...
I met Gerald Ford. I met Richard Nixon. I met Jimmy Carter. I met Dwight Eisenhower when he was a general. George Bush senior. I haven't met Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, although I got a letter from him.
To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.
I was working as a secretary in Manchester and thought I would always do that. Then I got this letter offering me a two-year fellowship where I could write; they would pay me a salary and give me a flat to live in. It was heaven.
The abortion cases produced an enormous amount of mail to my chambers, vastly more than to the other chambers, I am sure. I sometimes thought there wasn't a woman in the United States who didn't write me a letter on one side or the other of that issu...
I'm always mystified by the day-to-day workings of entities like Twitter that provide framework but not content, but I suppose it could be compared to the U.S. Postal Service, which manages to keep a lot of people employed doing lots of stuff other t...
I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it's about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. A...
I have about a dozen cassettes lying about which I use in random order. Very often, I pick up a cassette to dictate a letter, and I find my voice coming back at me with the lines of plays three years old.
Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen.
If you ever watched 'Hercules,' you can see that it was made in a comical way for the most part. I remember getting lots of letters from kids around the world saying that the show helped them curb their temper and not look for trouble and just walk a...
I'm used to always being different, in any context. People always want to know how I grew up, so I just say I grew up Muslim. That's the truth. Two Muslim girls can write me two extremely different letters - and they do. Some are very supportive, and...
When I started acting, I hoped I could make some kind of positive contribution to this world. When I get a letter from some kid in Nebraska saying that, prior to Han, nobody wanted to be his friend because Asians weren't cool if they weren't into mar...
If I can do something in less than one minute, I don't let myself procrastinate. I hang up my coat, put newspapers in the recycling, scan and toss a letter. Ever since I wrote about this rule in 'The Happiness Project,' I've been amazed by how many p...
I do not mourn the death of the printed letter in a snobby, East Coast, patrician way - 'Where have our manners gone?' - but because I love objects, I love paper, and I love something that I can hold to my chest for a moment. Still, I bear no grudge ...
Of 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 h...
