Quotes & Sayings About Blank Page

The Great Library may have once been a boon, but what is it today? What does it give us? It suppresses! It stifles! You, sir, do you own a book? No, sir, not a blank, filled only with what they want you to read...a real book, an original work, in the hand of the writer? The library owns our memories, yet you cannot own your own books! Why? Why do they fear it? Why do they fear to allow you the choice? — Rachel Caine

White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities. — Stephen Sondheim

Nobody's mind ever remains a blank page, however carefully they are locked away from the world. — Frances Hardinge

I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence. — Charles Krauthammer

The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words. — Jack Kerouac

If your life is a blank page, that only means you have room to write your story. You have the power to tell that story the way you want to. — Thea Harrison

As the philosopher Gilles Deleuze put it, no painter ever stands before a completely blank canvas, no author ever sits before a blank page. In fact, the surface confronting the modern artist is full of inherited images that must first be cleared from the imagination before one can begin to create one's own. — Marie Luise Knott

The key role of entrepreneurs, like the most crucial role of scientists, is not to fill in the gaps in an existing market or theory, but to generate entirely new markets or theories ... They stand before a canvas as empty as any painter's; a page as blank as any poet's. — George Gilder

Actually, who hasn't been through the ghastly experience of sitting in front of a blank page, with its toothless mouth grinning at you: Go ahead, let's see you lay a finger on me? A blank page is actually a whitewashed wall with no door and no window. Beginning to tell a story is like making a pass at a total stranger in a restaurant. — Amos Oz

The best tip for writing is just to write; to sit down and write, to begin doing it and not to be scared by the blank page. — David Almond

Writing is a solitary business. It's just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill. — Shannon Celebi

The blank page is the canvas on which a writer paints a story. — Stephanie Ayers

It is better to be a sad poem than a blank page. — Matt Haig

Your life is a blank page. You write on it. — Donald Miller

Nothing listens as well as a blank page. — Shaun Hick

The hours spent forming a written work can make one obsessive, distracted, compulsive, and neurotic even, especially when it comes to those rare, precious occasions of streaming pure inspiration. To have a muse moment interrupted - to watch her scuttle back into hiding with unshared insight remaining on the tip of her tongue - is a wicked irritation. When a writer's eyes glaze over, when she stares off at nothing or appears to be memorizing the lines on a blank page, when she falls asleep at the desk ... tiptoe softly. For a writer's greatest desire is to receive inspiration; her greatest nightmare, to have tossed to the wind what could've been captured in words. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Every person is born into life as a blank page and every person leaves life as a full book. — Christina Baldwin

When I was about 7 years old, I had been labeled dyslexic. I'd try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I'd get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I'd read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb. I would get angry. My legs would actually hurt when I was studying. My head ached. All through school and well into my career, I felt like I had a secret. When I'd go to a new school, I wouldn't want the other kids to know about my learning disability, but then I'd be sent off to remedial reading. — Tom Cruise

Only the blank page need never apologize. — Marty Rubin

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart. — Taiye Selasi

I took many notes, more than usual before I sat down and wrote Act One, Scene One. I had perhaps eighty pages of notes ... I was so prepared that the script seemed inevitable. It was almost all there. I could almost collate it from my notes. The story line, the rather tenuous plot we have, seemed to work out itself. It was a very helpful way to write, and it wasn't so scary. I wasn't starting with a completely blank page. — Charles Busch

If you look closely, there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers, in that it is filled with blank pages, dark pages, it has stars made of words, the famous magical cube made of numbers, and there is even a page which is a mirror. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

The blank page is my canvas, give me enough and I'll change the world. — Unknown

A certain bygone philosophy-which certainly must have quite forgotten all about the real child-used to speak of the child's nature as a tabula rasa, or 'blank page,' upon which experience and training might write what they pleased. As a matter of fact, the child's nature at birth, like that of a calf or a chick, is pretty well scribbled over by the experience of its ancestors. It is far from being blank, for as soon as the little organism comes into the world, it begins to do certain things and do them with much zeal and determination, as every one knows who knows real children. — Edward O. Sisson

You can't revise a blank page. — Leonard Wolf

What is it about the blank page that makes me want to hurl myself into a game of solitaire? I ask myself these kinds of questions while I'm playing solitaire. — Jennifer Gilmore

There's something intimidating, yet exciting about a blank page. — Christopher Stocking

I live for the blank page. — Lisa Unger

Writers are alphabet artists. The blank page becomes their canvas as they paint pictures with words. — Barbara Case Speers

Every day life adds a new page in my life...but the sad part is...every page is Blank... — Bharat Singh

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script. — Edward Norton

After tonight I will not date put pen to paper again. A blank page to me is like a drink to an alcoholic. — Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

She looked at the empty page, which remained blank, apart from the small wet dots from her tears, for hours. Her mind was a turmoil of sadness, rage, fear and all those emotions that gave her inspiration. However her heart lacked the will as the empty words enclosed her soul pulling it down towards the frenzied ravenous imps that stalked hells pantry.... — Virginia Alison

it's never too late to change. Every day is a blank page, and your story has yet to be written. — Amy Zhang

Before the magisterial mess of Trevor Thomas's house, the orderly houses that most of us live in seem meagre and lifeless
as, in the same way, the narratives called biographies pale and shrink in the face of the disorderly actuality that is a life. The house also stirred my imagination as a metaphor for the problem of writing. Each person who sits down to write faces not a blank page but his own overfilled mind. The problem is to clear out most of what is in it ... The goal is to make a space where a few ideas and images and feelings may be so arranged that a reader will want to linger awhile among them, rather than to flee, as I wanted to flee from Thomas's house. — Janet Malcolm

The problem with a plan is that you fill up the blank page of a new day with a 'to-do' list before you get there. And if you're not careful there's no room for anything else.
A plan, especially a very focused one, narrows down the possibilies of the future to just a couple of things: that things either go to plan, or they don't. — John C. Parkin

For me, the beauty of the blank page, or empty screen,staring up at nine thirty after two cups of coffee and a deep breath remains unique. The blankness invites scribbling on, mental drawing , and the best feeling I know - apart from the more obvious sensual ones - is the feeling of putting down the first thought and seeing it turn into symbols. Making an idea into an emotion. — Adam Gopnik

I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may. — Sylvia Plath

The best part of being a little child is having a long blank page ahead that he can fill it with almost everything! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The Garden Under Snow
Now the garden is under snow
a blank page our footprints write on
clare who was never mine
but always belonged to herself
Sleeping Beauty
a crystalline blanket
this is her spring
this is her sleeping/awakening
she is waiting
everything is waiting
the improbable shapes of roots
my baby
her face
a garden, waiting. — Audrey Niffenegger

It would absolutely suck if you paid a few bucks for a book only to find that on the first page it said, 'Once upon a time they all lived happily ever after' and the rest of the book was blank. — Simon Travaglia

I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page. — Nora Roberts

And when my heart is beating
too rapidly in the dark,
I will go downstairs in a robe,
open it up to a blank page,
and try to settle on the blue lines
whatever it is that seems to be the matter. — Billy Collins

It all adds up; never discount your efforts, because small efforts build big things. One word doesn't make a novel, but one word does begin a novel, and from that small beginning everything else follows. Even if it's just 'The', write something on that blank page. — Laurell K. Hamilton

If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: I recognize only one duty, and that is to love. — Albert Camus

You slogged from the terrifying emptiness of the blank page to the two most beautiful words in a writer's vocabulary: The End. — Lisa Cron

The question about the page is: what is beneath it? It seems to have only two dimensions, you can pick it up and turn it over and the back is the same as the front. Nothing, you say, disappointed.
But you were looking in the wrong place, you were looking on the back instead of beneath. Beneath the page is another story. Beneath the page is a story. Beneath the page is everything that has ever happened, most of which you would rather not hear about.
The page is not a pool but a skin, a skin is there to hold in and it can feel you touching it. Did you really think it would just lie there and do nothing?
Touch the page at your peril: it is you who are blank and innocent, not the page. Nevertheless you want to know, nothing will stop you. You touch the page, it's as if you've drawn a knife across it, the page has been hurt now, a sinuous wound opens, a thin incision. Darkness wells through. — Margaret Atwood

I'll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It's the silence that scares me. It's the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment. — Mark Lawrence

The blank page, otherwise known as the vast playground of the writer's imagination. — J.L. Bond

But when I accept the call of creative passion, I am a bold stroke of vermilion, a renegade hyperbole, or the wild fury of jazz violin. The world is a canvas to explore, a blank page to fill, and an arpeggio of waiting experiences. This moving masterpiece called "life" becomes intoxicating when it's lived as if it were art. — Jill Badonsky

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the family's asleep and I'm alone, I think about the next day's writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page. — Athol Fugard

If tragedy does not ensnare a man, if affliction does not agitate him, if love does not lay him down in the cradle of dreams, then his life is like a blank, white page in the book of existence. In that year I saw the — Kahlil Gibran

No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by. — Charlotte Bronte

As I stare at the blank page, I am at once awash inwords but unable to find the ones I want to use. — Carrie Ryan

Dear Diary,
All that she left inside the box was a blank book and a name. You are the book, and I am the name...An-Ya. As you know, my name is printed on your first page. Did She write it? What did She look like as She stood over you with Her pen? Were there tears in Her eyes? Why were you left empty inside? — Diane Rene Christian

For me, writing never gets easier. It's always hard work. It doesn't matter how many words you wrote the day before, or how many novels you've completed in the last decade: every day you start fresh again with that same blank page, or that same blank screen. — Lincoln Child

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream. — Gaston Bachelard

And hope, that ancient seed, redeems the heart it feeds. The heartbeat of any conscious now is poised on the same choice that hope gives all of us, between shadows of the past, and the bright, blank page of any new day. — Gregory David Roberts

There are a lot of people, who want to be writers, who stumble at a blank page. You could imagine an algorithm that could give writers a first draft or a starter kit, so it could enable people to be more prolific in their writing. — Philip M. Parker

People seem to believe that despair is the same as anguish, but it is not. It's true that despair is surrounded by anguish, but at its core, despair is a silent, blank page. — Elizabeth Kostova

When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,
when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,
oh, then diet yourself well on biography,
the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The act of creation fascinates me. You can only sit with blank page and wait. You cannot press a button, cannot program it. — Joan Rivers

I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all - what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page - do they want someone to write on it? — Wilfrid

I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page. — Monique Wittig

Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. — Steven Pressfield

Everyday we just copy&paste ourselves from the previous day instead of creating a new blank page and be something different and original. — Marcelo Goianira

I once made the mistake of writing a story with David Corbett. The man smoked me. He can delineate the character and personality of an accordion in three strokes. I didn't even know accordions had character. This act of generosity and wisdom from a very good writer will help anyone who is staring at a blank page, any day, any time. Highly recommended. — Luis Alberto Urrea

The reverie we intend to study is poetic reverie. This is a reverie which poetry puts on the right track, the track an expanding consciousness follows. This reverie is written, or, at least, promises to be written. It is already facing the great universe of the blank page. Then images begin to compose and fall into place. — Gaston Bachelard

The blank page is the great equalizer and grand opportunity for continued learning and growth. — K.J. Kilton

A life hidden behind the veil of excuses leaves behind a blank page, but a life with the brilliant light of purpose shone upon it fills every page with wisdom. — Farshad Asl

Each time you stare at a blank page, you end up staring at yourself. — Angelos Michalopoulos

The enemy is not the badly written page; it is the empty page the great advantage of a badly written page is that it can be rewritten. It can be improved. A blank page is zero. In fact, it's worse than zero, because it represents territory you're afraid, unwilling, or too lazy to explore. Avoid exploring this territory long enough, and you'll abandon your book. — Timothy Hallinan

A lot of people don't like to spend money on a journal because they're afraid to wreck it, which is understandable. I buy beautifully made leather-bound journals because I have lost my fear of the blank page. — Keri Smith

He could be so cynical. So dry and acidic. As blank as a page. Could he be tender, too? — Kelly Creagh

And they spoke of their Antigonie, who they called Go, as if she were a friend.
Leo hadn't yet written any music, but he had made drawings on butcher paper stolen from the kitchen. They curled around his walls, intricate doodles, extensions of the boy's own lean, slight body. The shape of Leo's jaw in profile, devestating. The way he gnawed his fingernails to the crescents, the fine shining hairs down the center of his nape, the smell of him, up close, pure and clean, bleaching.
The ones made for music are the most beloved of all. Their bodies a container for the spirit within; the best of them is music, the rest only instrument of flesh and bone.
The weather conspired. Snow fell softly in the windows. It was too cold to be out for long. The world colorless, a dreamscape, a blank page, the linger of woodsmoke on the back of the tongue. — Lauren Groff

The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song. — Bob Weir

I pull out my notebook, turn to a blank page, and write, The ghost of Charles Dickens told me that after he turned over in his grave, he couldn't go back to sleep. He's decided to leave eternal rest, reinhabit his decaying body, and exact revenge on you for disturbing his slumber. You've been warned.

I rip out the page and fold it in half twice, making sure the corners are perfectly lined up. I haven't had to make a friend since kindergarten, and apparently my tactics haven't changed much. — Kasie West

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page. — Jodi Picoult

One single letter cures the blank page. — Stephanie Ayers

The answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again ... — John Geddes

Whatever the unknown in Europe, it had to be better than the known in a small town, where truth was hidden behind smiles, pleasantries, and an abundance of stretch lace at weddings. Whatever, the yet-to-be-written truth about her own life, it seemed certain to be waiting elsewhere on a blank page, somewhere people made no attempt to predict the future based upon a person's past.
Quote from: A Summer Abroad, Mrs. Duchesney's First Real Mystery
c. 2013 Peggy Kopman-Owens — Peggy Kopman-Owens

I enjoy the freedom of the blank page. — Irvine Welsh

Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one. — Brad Paisley

There's something about a blank page that makes me tingle. — Nikki Grimes

Fiction is very greedy. It will take all you know and then some. The first novel I tried to write, I was struck by this - the appetite of the blank page for ever more information, ever more data. An empty book is a greedy thing. You are right: You wind up using everything you know, and often more than once. — John Updike

One of the strangest things is the act of creation.
You are faced with a blank slate - a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument.
You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena.
And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form.
It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor's tool onto the surface of the wood or marble.
You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing.
You have glimpsed the divine. — Vera Nazarian

The truth is, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist is the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter; the only thing the two have in common is the blank page. The jobs entail different talents and different desires. — Lynsey Addario

The video maker doesn't easily face a blank page. Because the videomaker can run it either any way, this way or the other way and erase it if they don't like it and so on. — Stan Brakhage

A theatre is not a blank page for editorial, it is not a soapbox or a Tannoy system: it is a conscience that wakes with what is happening in the space, and wakes further still in response to what people are making of it. — Andrew O'Hagan

Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet - so deadly sad - that to read one line of it would dissolve any courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by. — Charlotte Bronte

Writing the first draft of a new story is incredibly difficult for me. I will happily do revisions, because once I can see the words on the page, I can go about ripping them up and moving scenes around. A blank page, though? Terrifying. I'm always angsty when I'm working my way through a first draft. — Marie Lu

Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can. — Douglas Pagels

While there may be 'bad' days - even 'bad' weeks - keep going, write something else, go and read (research!) or take a complete break, whatever works for you. But in the long run, persevere, and keep on writing. A blank page won't write itself! — Sherry Gloag

The truth was, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist was the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter; the only thing the two had in common was the blank page. — Lynsey Addario

I hate when a director says to me 'Here's how I envision this scene' ... excuse me? It's right here in the script - I 'envisioned' it FOR you. Do what I wrote. If you want to 'envision', you should become a writer. Where the fuck were you when the page was blank? — Harlan Ellison

You can fix anything but a blank page. — Nora Roberts

Within these margins I find my serenity - with a blank page and a pencil, I am set free. — Jordyn McKenzie

Would you still read me when I become a blank page. — Jenim Dibie

Only the blank page needs no editing. — Marty Rubin

See this page of paper? It's blank," Scull said. "That, sir, is the most frightening battlefield in the world: the blank page. I mean to fill this paper with decent sentences, sir - this page and hundreds like it. Let me tell you, Colonel, it's harder than fighting Lee. Why, it's harder than fighting Napoleon. It requires unremitting attention, — Larry McMurtry