Top 942 Desk Quotes & Sayings

I'm always a great student of writers' work habits. Balzac sat at his desk dressed in a monk's robe, and he always had to have a rotten apple on his desk. The smell of the apple inspired him somehow.

I wake up with the story in my head, so I really like to be at my desk about five minutes after I wake up. So I don't get dressed. I put on a bathrobe, I make tea and sit at my desk.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

My desk is more of a place where I set my stuff, and then I move around. If I'm at the office, I'm usually wandering around to different meeting rooms all day or taking people out or making tea. I'm rarely at my desk; it's just a place to hang my hat.

I can only write new words at my desk, the one I've owned for 25 years. When we moved to our new house I designed my office around it. I've written everything I've ever written at this desk.

Go to the desk. Stay at the desk. Thrive at the desk.

I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn't bring my chairs with me.

There was a day where I was sitting at my desk, working 90-hour work weeks, in a suit, looking at a computer, with all these pitch books on my desk, and I just thought, 'This can't be my life.'

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.

Sherlock: You're keeping a SCRAPBOOK. Only old ladies and pre-pubescent girls keep scrapbooks, John. John: It's not a scrapbook, Sherlock. I'm collecting papers relevant to the cases. It helps me remember the details. And it was locked away in my desk drawer. Sherlock: The lock on your desk drawer was insulting me with its pretense at security.

If I'm not at my desk by 4 AM, I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours. In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hour glass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do pushups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing.

There was a day where I was sitting at my desk, working 90-hour work weeks, in a suit, looking at a computer, with all these pitch books on my desk, and I just thought, "This can't be my life..."

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.

An old Russian woman goes into Kremlin, gets an audience with Mikhail Gorbachev and says, In America anyone can go to the White House, walk up to Reagan's desk and say, 'I don't like the way you are running the country.' Gorbachev replied, You can do the same thing in the Soviet Union. You can go into the Kremlin, walk up to my desk and say 'I don't like the way Reagan is running his country.'

Bell seated himself behind the desk, motioning for Nancy to stand opposite him. There was tense silence for a moment. Then Bell reached for a desk telephone. "I am going to call the police, Miss Drew, and turn you over to them on a charge of trespassing, breaking, and entering with an attempt to steal." "I wish you would," Nancy replied. "if it is possible over that dummy telephone.

Persist - don't take no for an answer. If you're happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you'll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.

I've stayed in so many hotel rooms that I'm shocked if, when I stay in a hotel room, the hotel phone isn't on the desk. Then I'm like, "This isn't a real hotel room." If there's not outlets next to the desk, or if they have an iPhone adapter for an iPhone 4, that's when I'm sitting there annoyed. I understand that it's ridiculous, but that's just me spending way too much time in hotels.

Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.

Many writers-in-waiting spend a lot of time avoiding the work at hand. The most common way to avoid writing is by procrastination. This is the writer's greatest enemy. There is little to say about it except that once you decide to write every day, you must make yourself sit at the desk or table for the required period whether or not you are putting down words. Make yourself take the time even if the hours seem fruitless. Ideally, after a few days or weeks of being chained to the desk, you will submit to the story that must be told.

Get up from your desk and wander outside occasionally. To be a good writer one needs to be a good observer, and there isn't a lot to be observed at desk level.

It used to be presumed that if you weren't at your desk working, you weren't working. But we said, why can't we make a workplace where casual meetings are as important as working at your desk? Sometimes that's where your better creative work happens.

I was terrible at desk jobs.

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.'

I didn't have a desk to write 'Red Queen' on, so I got a nice writing desk.

A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.

It seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.

It used to be presumed that if you weren't at your desk working, you weren't working, But we said, 'Why can't we make a workplace where casual meetings are as important as working at your desk?' Sometimes that's where your better creative work happens.

If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?

My desk is right next to my bed. So I sit on my bed. I write in a big notebook which is on the desk. And if I feel drowsy, I just have to slide into bed.

I don't have a Bloomberg on my desk. I don't care.

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.

A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available.

About five years ago, I fainted from exhaustion. I hit my head on my desk. I broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. It started me on this journey of rediscovering sleep and balance and integrating my life. I think everyone should stop and reassess their lives before you hit your head on your desk.

The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.

I just couldn't take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that's about all I did at school.

My desk is my drums.

I love my bed. It is larger than a desk and better designed to hold books and papers. It is softer than a desk and better designed for naps. It is the center of all good things. And day or night, everyone knows where to find me.

To design a desk which may cost $1,000 is easy for a furniture designer but to design a functional and good desk which shall cost only $50 can only be done by the very best

In school, the year was the marker. Fifth grade. Senior year of high school. Sophomore year of college. Then after, the jobs were the marker. That office. This desk. But now that school is over and I've been working at the same place in the same office at the same desk for longer than I can truly believe, I realize: You have become the marker. This is your era. And it's only if it goes on and on that will have to look for other ways to identify the time.

I can remember playing under the big wooden desk in his office. My mother didn't like us to chew gum, so we'd go into his office, and he'd feed us gum under the desk.

I love a vision board. I have one hanging over my desk right now. Because what you see, you become, and it reminds you when you start getting busy in the day, about your vision. I like words more than pictures. I have a card sitting on my desk right now that says, "I only give out that which I wish to receive in return." It's one of Louise Hay's cards. Words remind me more and it gives me something to hold onto when I'm frantic about something else.

I plan to die at my desk.

After you publish a book, you become a writer and you're supposed to take it very seriously. You're supposed to show up at your desk - although frankly, I don't have a desk, I write in bed - you're supposed to show up at your bed and produce work. I think it's a little bit like work. I like to have fun with it, do things like make silly book trailers. I don't want to take this too seriously.

In my home office, I built a custom sit-stand desk to which I connected a big, kidney shaped glass top which I got for cheap at Ikea. Kidney-shaped desk tops are, I think, the most efficient of all possible desk shapes.

I was having the surreal experience of having myself show myself around my office and bullpen.” “Oh! My desk. I could’ve sat at my desk. I could’ve sat at your desk.” “No.” “It’s a vid set.” “Even then, no.

My brother Max made my desk. It's a masterpiece, like a piano. Everybody who comes in my office loves my desk.

Donald Trump said, "When I become president, we're going to create an America's desk." America's desk meaning, he would call them every day to find out what's going on in the job market, where we need help, where we are lagging, where are we winning and we .

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

With Gargoyles, I didn't want to walk away. I liked the idea too much, I was too passionate about it and so I went to my bosses and said, "Guys, I want to produce this show." Their initial response, lets call it dubious, but they let me give it a shot and sort of the rest is history. I moved from one side of the desk to the other side of the desk, and became a full time writer which had always been the goal, but I came about getting the actual work in a sort of roundabout way.

I like things on my desk that are pretty and make a statement. It's important that whatever is on my desk inspires me because that's where I spend a lot of my time working and creating things.

If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing.

Sir, I see a lot of documents in my day-to-day business, and I can't tell you every document that I've seen. It may have passed across my desk. It may not have passed across my desk. I truthfully cannot answer that question, other than to say I don't remember.

If people start going to a desk, some one individual employees desk and they don't report to them... it's a sign that they believe that person can help them. So if you see that consistently, those are your barrels. Just promote them, give them more opportunity as fast as you can.

I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.

Writing helped to have jobs that involved running around, pushing things like dish carts and wheelbarrows. It would be hard to sit at a desk all day, and then come to sit at another desk. Also, it helps to abandon hope. If I sit at my computer, determined to write a New Yorker story I won't get beyond the first sentence. It's better to put no pressure on it. What would happen if I followed the previous sentence with this one, I'll think. If the eighth draft is torture, the first should be fun. At least if you're writing humor.

There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant because I recognized the marks on his uniform, and I knew it was a desk because it's always a desk. There's always someone at a desk, except when it's a table that functions as a desk. You sit behind a desk, and everyone knows you're supposed to be there, and that you're doing something that involves your brain. It's an odd, special kind of importance. I think everyone should get a desk; you can sit behind it when you feel like you don't matter.

You can know a person by the kind of desk he keeps. If the president of a company has a clean desk then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.

No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive ships, cheap equipment in the human cranium, arguments before a road cut.

If I beat my against this desk, maybe things will make sense," Angela murmured. "Or if I beat someone else's head against this desk...." She eyed Jared speculatively

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding.