A Quote by Fran Lebowitz

Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks - chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write.

Fran Lebowitz

Quote Topics

Among Career Chief Contrary Down Down And Drawbacks Fact Frequently Imagine Letters Many May Sit Them Unpleasant Without Write

Quote Author

Fran Lebowitz
American - Journalist
Born: October 27, 1950

Yes, I receive fan mail. One of my favorite things to do is sit down and read the letters people write. It's really amazing the time people take to write these letters, tell their stories, draw pictures, etc.

Marisa Miller

As the component parts of all new machines may be said to be old[,] it is a nice discriminating judgment, which discovers that a particular arrangement will produce a new and desired effect. ... Therefore, the mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc. like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as the exhibition of his thoughts; in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea to the world.

Robert Fulton

To a certain extent I imagine a play is completely finished in my mind - in my case, at any rate - without my knowing it, before I sit down to write.

Edward Albee

There are many people who get beat up, who suffer, who are victimized, and then they sit down to write and they write crap. How many of these graphic novels over the years are from really talented people? Most of them actually, if you look at them, are self-pitying confessionals about "poor me".

Jules Feiffer

People write me letters and say I should answer them. But I don't like to answer letters. I don't write letters. I've never written my mother one.

Todd Rundgren

If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.

J. D. Salinger

There are so many people, especially among our comrades, who imagine that words are nothing - on the contrary, isn't it true that saying a thing well is as interesting and as difficult as painting it?

Vincent Van Gogh

I don't sit down to write a country song. I don't sit down to write a rap song. I just sit down to write a song, you know what I mean? And I try to make that song the best it can be.

Brantley Gilbert

You know, many writers really don't like to write. I think this the chief complaint of so many. They hate to write; they do it under the compulsion that makes any artist the victim he is, but they loathe the process of sitting down trying to turn thoughts into reasonable sentences.

Harper Lee

You cannot imagine how many people called, how many letters, how many emails. Every place I go, people ask me, 'Please, don't quit.'

Jesse White

My dear Isa, I now sit down on my botom to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me.

Marjorie Fleming

O ay, letters - I had letters - I am persecuted with letters - I hate letters - nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has 'em, one does not know why - they serve one to pin up one's hair.

William Congreve

I have a hard time expressing myself when I'm emotional, so my family has done this forever. We write each other letters if we're fighting or whatever. And my dad's a writer, but we write each other letters because we feel that it's easier to get out what you're truly saying if you write it down.

Lana Condor

Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama bin Ladin and say, 'Listen man, what is it that you're so angry at me about that you're willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings?' That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.

Matthew Modine

A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.