A Quote by Daniel Levitin

Unscrupulous writers often count on the fact that most people don't bother reading footnotes or tracking down citations. — © Daniel Levitin
Unscrupulous writers often count on the fact that most people don't bother reading footnotes or tracking down citations.
If there's one thing that lawyers know about reading documents, it's to pay attention to the footnotes. In fact, oftentimes the most important information is buried there.
Before you take your address, while you're still reading the putt, imagine the ball tracking on the line you've chosen and falling into the cup. If you don't believe you can make every putt, why bother trying?
Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.
I believe you have to write every day–make the time. It’s about having an organized mind instead of a chaotic and untidy one. There is a myth that writers are bohemian and do what they like in their own way. Real writers are the most organized people on the planet. You have to be. You’re doing the work and running your own business as well. It’s an incredibly organized state. [Also reading]…one of the things reading does do is discipline your mind. There are no writers who are not readers.
Unfortunately, my system for tracking down funny female writers isn't methodical. It's mainly based on word-of-mouth, which can cast a limited net.
Most movies shot in Italian don't even bother to record the sound. In fact, sometimes when Fellini works, he doesn't even know what the dialogue is going to be, and he simply has his characters count from 1 to 10, knowing he will loop in their dialogue later.
[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
Intelligence doesn't just mean tracking down terrorists; It means finding out what is in people's hearts and minds and discovering the complexity of most issues.
There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn't bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.
I read continually and don't understand writers who say they don't read while working on a book. For a start, a book takes me about two years to write, so there's no way I am depriving myself of reading during that time. Another thing is that reading other writers is continually inspiring - reading great writers reminds you how hard you have to work.
You were born with the seeds of your talent, the ability to observe the world around you and weave piece of it into a story. I believe that most -- if not all -- people are born with these seeds. What separates the writers from the non-writers is that the writers actually sit down and, you know... write.
In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" - exactly what, pray tell, is that? - to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.
While reading writers of great formulatory power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C’mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.
In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere — "Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible.
I write better in Cape Breton... too many people around in Ontario. Down there I meet all sorts of non-human people, but they don't bother me, and I don't feel I have to apologize on behalf of my species quite so often.
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