Notebook Full Quotes & Sayings

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations. — Rufus Wainwright

My father had the right idea. Begin from an assumption of insanity and then laugh, where possible. — Hanif Kureishi

An action of God may be the only thing that can save the Church today. — Ralph Martin

I write and write and write, and then I edit it down to the parts that I think are amusing, or that help the storyline, or I'll write a notebook full of ideas of anecdotes or story points, and then I'll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story. — Al Yankovic

I could safely say that this was the oddest situation I had ever been in: trying to use a magical power to heal a strange, half-naked man in his bedroom. — Kelly Zekas

Writing is so much more problematic than drawing, full of moral pitfalls, ambiguity, public responsibility. If you record a day of your life, does the decision to do so change the shape of the day? One of Doris Lessing's days in The Golden Notebook is fifty-four pages long. It's complete; the rest are summaries - the "impression" of a day foisted artfully upon the reader by providing a few details. Fiction is made this way - as lineal perspective gives the illusion of three dimensions in drawing. But does the selection of a day - that you begin by knowing you must remember and observe - really affect it? Do you change the balance, distort the truth? The period itself, its choice and selection, does that not in itself constitute a kind of misconstruction, and the rest follow subconsciously? — Kate Millett

I think when you play a role, you always have to be a defense attorney for that character. — Matt Bomer

John Roebling was a believer in hydropathy, the therapeutic use of water. Come headaches, constipation, the ague, he would sit in a scalding-hot tub for hours at a time, then jump out and wrap up in ice-cold, slopping-wet bed sheets and stay that way for another hour or two. He took Turkish baths, mineral baths. He drank vile concoctions of raw egg, charcoal, warm water, and turpentine, and there were dozens of people along Canal Street who had seen him come striding through his front gate, cross the canal bridge, and drink water "copiously" - gallons it seemed - from the old fountain beside the state prison. ("This water I relish much . . ." he would write in his notebook.) "A wet bandage around the neck every night, for years, will prevent colds . . ." he preached to his family. "A full cold bath every day is indispensable — David McCullough

I think that sometimes the difference between winning and losing, success and failure, is this gray line between will, passion and self-belief that says, 'I'm going to do this'. — Howard Schultz

Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Actually, my first literary heroes were the Romantic poets, so I began to get serious by writing poems. I have notebooks full of them that I cherish but am afraid to look at. — John Dufresne

I carry a notebook full of sketches of pictures I want to take - they are really scruffy sketches, but at least I am going out there with a clear objective. — Nigel Dennis

Art is a universal language and through it each nation makes its own unique contribution to the culture of mankind. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

My happiness comes from doing all I can for my students. To help them, what else could there be? — Frederick Lenz

He who acquires knowledge and acts up to it and teaches it to the people is noble to the angels of heaven and earth. He is like the sun which illumines itself and gives light to other things. Such a man is like a pot of musk which is full of fragrance and gives fragrance to others. He who teaches knowledge to others but does not himself act up to it is like a notebook which does not benefit itself but benefits others or like an instrument which gives edge to iron but itself has got no edge, or like a needle which remains naked but sews clothing for others, or like a lamp which gives light to other things but itself burns. — Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

All you had to say was, 'I am a writer,' and you became one. You didn't even have to write anything. You could just sit in a coffee shop with a notebook and stare into space, with a slightly bemused look on your face, judging the weight of the world with a jaundiced eye. As you can see, you can be completely full of shit and still be a writer ... I also thought it was going to be a great way to meet girls, but it wasn't
probably because as I was staring into space, I no doubt looked mildly retarded. You see, I wanted to write plays, which in retrospect is a lot harder than learning Mandarin, I think. How I ended up in this delusional state shall be saved for another time. — Lewis Black

Braininess is attractive — Richard Dawkins

A basic ingredient in the manufacture of perfume, the attar-a heavy, pale-yellow oil stored in small metal drums-had been put up as collateral by Bulgaria, in lieu of gold, at the Moscow Narodny Bank, a Communist finance house for East-West trade. — S.J Perelman