A Quote by Phyllis A. Whitney

Short of throwing away all television sets, I really don't know what we can do about writing.

Phyllis A. Whitney

Quote Topics

About Away Know Really Sets Short Television Throwing Throwing Away Writing

Quote Author

Phyllis A. Whitney
Japanese - Writer
September 9, 1903 - February 8, 2008

Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I've written and throwing it away.

Ben Marcus

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

Richard Russo

When an opportunity comes, it holds possibilities. And when you move away from it or don't sense it or grasp it, you're really throwing away your future; you're throwing away your tomorrow.

Robert H. Schuller

My day job is writing for television. So I've been on enough sets, and I know how things work.

Tom Scharpling

There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they're not useful. But always know what you're throwing away.

Will Shetterly

Now, all America sits in front of television sets and those television sets exude, I am sorry to say, a considerable amount of radioactive material. It's not huge, you know, but it's enough so that people who have made a habit of watching TV ... get the TV radiation.

L. Ron Hubbard

Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.

Laura Kasischke

I saw this new thing called television, and I saw people throwing pies in each other's faces, and I thought, 'This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?' So I said to my parents, 'You know, I don't think I'll go into seminary right away. I think I'll go into television.'

Fred Rogers

It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.

Thomas McGuane

I chose philosophy because it sounded like something I ought to be interested in. I didn't know anything about it, I didn't even know what it was talking about. What I really spent my time doing in those years was writing short stories. There were all sorts of interesting courses, but what I really wanted to do was make stories one way or another.

Wes Anderson

Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing.

Jorge Luis Borges

I was writing short films and I was going through this really, really, really terrible end of a relationship that I didn't want to be going through. It was too much for me to process and all of a sudden I had this idea for my first feature film and I knew right away I had to start writing it.

Evan Glodell

What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.

John Howe

It's amazing how many people you see on TV. I did my first television show a month ago, and the next day five million television sets were sold. The people who couldn't sell theirs threw them away.

Bob Hope

I don't revise a lot when writing short stories. As far as the novel, I definitely thought more about plot. Honestly, I'm still pretty confused about what "plot" means. I've been reading some of my Goodreads reviews and one reader noted that the The Last Days of California "reads like a short story stretched to the breaking point, padded and brought into novel range..." I don't know what people want, really.