A Quote by Hilary Mantel

'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.

Hilary Mantel

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Hilary Mantel
English - Writer
Born: July 6, 1952

Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start.

Robert Harris

David Letterman is the best late-night talk show host right now, hands down, and has been since he first took the desk.

George Lopez

I think the best thing I ever did was, years before I got the 'Late Night' show, when I first got out to Los Angeles to be a television writer, the first thing I did was I signed up to take improvisational classes... And I studied that for years, and I really loved it.

Conan O'Brien

I don't know much about writing a show or being a show-runner on a show, but I can only imagine that when you first cast a show and you first do a pilot, there are so many components that you're throwing into the mix and you're not sure how they're going to develop.

Alison Brie

My first show was called 'I Know I've Been Changed' in '92. I tried to do this show for years and years. It kept failing over and over and over again. Every time I went out to do the show, nobody showed up. I was like, 'What is this about?'

Tyler Perry

You can't reinvent the wheel. I remember when we first started out at 'Late Night,' we were trying to hire directors, and this guy was like, 'I see you behind a glass desk.' I don't. And he's like, 'Yeah, the glass desk.' I go, 'I don't really see me as a glass desk guy.'

Jimmy Fallon

I know there are, like, 12 rules for late night: a desk, a band. Will people take me seriously if I don't wear a tie?

Jimmy Kimmel

What keeps me up late at night, in the sense of worry, I guess it's innovation. It's funny to be worried about it, because it's a fair point that wow, look at the innovation we've seen over the past, not just 30 years, but over the past two years.

Jonathan Zittrain

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.

Octavia E. Butler

Basically, I am a night owl. My wife is an early bird, so she goes to bed around 9:30, and my kids are in bed about 8. So, if I am home, I will usually start writing about 9:30 and go till about 12:30 or 1:30, depending on what my energy level is.

Barack Obama

I had kids at age 47, and very late in life, and I'd been doing it for 30 straight years, writing songs, making a record and touring and starting the process right over.

Bob Seger

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

Hilary Mantel

I fell asleep at my desk many times. This was when working on events—virtually every one I’ve done in the last 5 years. I was not confronting the writing of speeches. In fact, I was not wanting to confront what I was doing at the time—being irresponsible... I am now known for falling asleep. This has happened 50 times in the last 5 years and probably 20 times at my desk in the last 2 years.

Mike Rinder

The first show that my dad and my mom did together was for, was a comedy series, a short form that went in the middle of late-night news, and then through all of their career, it was always the "Ed Sullivan Show," it was a variety act, my dad was on the "Jimmy Dean Show" for a few years.

Brian Henson

A lot of what is done by the climate lobby is anti-science. But there is some science behind it. Like, there are greenhouse gases, and they do contribute to warming. But if you look at the last, say, 160 years, the first 80 of that period, they went up about four-tenths of a degree. And now, the second 80 that CO2 has increased by, what, 30 percent or something, it's gone up five-tenths of a degree. And there's been in the last 30 or 40 years, there's been no real increase in storms or bad weather.

Charles Koch

I was writing rap at 12 years old and began writing songs as a 20-year-old. I think I wrote my first song in the winter of 2008-2009, when I was in Buenos Aires. I was writing about growing up and my boys back home.

Lukas Forchhammer

A Quote by Hilary Mantel

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