Penning Quotes & Sayings

At their time of life they should be wearing trouser suits and baking cakes, maybe spending their days penning hand-written letters of complaint to newspapers. Not drinking alcopops with crude straws in them. — Matthew Crow

I went out there to play my game for the fun of it and never based my career around records. — Jerry Rice

Sure, I told him to fuck himself and yes, I paid for it dearly (ruptured spleen). But after my recovery and given the time to reflect, I have a better understanding of who I am penning this for. Not just for the parole board. Not just for wronged Chinese people, not for racist whites, not for my prison therapy group, not for Manny or Jaynuss, not for Momma, not for my once-again estranged father, not even for Lene (though I hope and, in weaker moments, pray she will read this one day), but for others, like myself. Those who lack foresight. Those often overwhelmed by the present. Those ignorant of and indifferent to the past. Those whose worst qualities come to the surface when tested. Those who are fertile ground for dubious moral judgment. Those who feel, in some mysterious but common sense, unmoored. — Leland Cheuk

But if the star should set, even while I am penning these lines, be it so; still I can say it has shone, and I have received a rich portion. — Hans Christian Andersen

I've been so used to thinking of what the borders are keeping out that I haven't considered that they're also penning us in. — Lauren Oliver

With yourself, I think you have to decide the kind of person that you really want to be, and for me, it's just a sweet girl. — Miley Cyrus

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. — Herman Melville

Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

They looked down on the landscapes of West 1, and then with that last step it was as if somebody had exploded a daisycutter bomb, scything away the greenery for miles around and replacing it with concrete, tarmac and steel, staining the shining river a turbid grey and penning it in with reinforced banks and bridges, all under a grubby, colourless sky. Joshua thought you couldn't have had a better demonstration of what humanity could do to a world, given a few centuries and a lot of oil to burn. — Terry Pratchett

The writing process is like developing a photograph; you never know what will turn out. There's nothing like penning a frame, and giving the story world permission to unfold as I witness the picture come into focus. — Paige Crutcher

My first book was signed up when I was 13, and I've been writing ever since. But penning the 'Halo' series has been so much more rewarding than I ever expected. For three years, from the age of 16 to 19, I poured my life, my experiences, and a love for the supernatural that dates back to childhood into these books. — Alexandra Adornetto

As a young wife and mother living in a pre-Pinterest world, I used to glue-gun bows and small pieces of minutia together methodically. I was an insomniac proudly penning thank you notes longer than the Declaration of Independence to every person who had even sent me a card. I was reorganizing my linen closet, ironing placemats, straight-ironing my hair, and never saying no to any person that asked me for a favor. And, I forgot to mention, I didn't really like myself.
I felt like a fuzzy, carbon copy of myself. I felt the passion, the conviction, and the grit somewhere inside of me yet a bunch of preconceived ideas somehow got in the way. — Ann Brasco

Through danger safety comes - through trouble rest. — John Marston

Concerning no subject would [George Bernard] Shaw be deterred by the minor accident of total ignorance from penning a definitive opinion. — Roger Scruton

Rarely has a man been more comfortable with his own greatness. He spent much of his leisure time penning long and flattering portraits of himself, declaring that there had never 'been a greater botanist or zoologist', and that his system of classification was 'the greatest achievement in the realm of science'. Modestly, he suggested that his gravestone should bear the inscription Princeps Botanicorum, 'Prince of Botanists'. It was never wise to question his generous self-assessments. Those who did so were apt to find they had weeds named after them. — Bill Bryson

Government should exist in order to help fortify the country and make those who are in need better able to meet their own. — Maya Soetoro-Ng

When I was a schoolgirl my safe haven was a place at the uninhabited part of my parents' house. I used to climb up to the large windowsill that was facing a spreading plum-tree in the garden. Reading books, or penning my own stories, diaries and poems, it was especially fun to rest there during the warmer seasons of the year with an open window, when the tree was all covered with tender, odorous blossom in spring, and with rich purple fruitage in summer. — Sahara Sanders

Now you're just being silly. He's a mercenary- he's not going to go about penning love letters, and really, what would he write? 'Anna ... love you ... grrr?' Olivia to Annalia — Kresley Cole

In the mid-nineties, I quit my job as a senior feature writer at 'The Mail' on Sunday in the U.K. and became a 'ghost writer,' collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, soldiers and sporting legends who needed help in penning their autobiographies. — Michael Robotham

On Christmas morning when the beach is calling and the family's gathering and the presents are a mystery (or definitely feels book-shaped anyway), and after the splendour and celebration of Christmas Eve, we don't want Christmas Day to be an anticlimax. We've gifted our Oxfam goats or geese and bought our CWS calendars, and what we'd like, on Christmas Day, what we really want, is for things to be - perfect. Just like the old days. Something new, but also something familiar.
And that's what's so wonderful about the Christmas story, and why preachers penning their reflections approach with trepidation but also with joy: at Christmas, the news is all good. — Bronwyn Angela White

Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience ... Moving ... compassionate. — Leigh Newman

Decisions are the privilege we've been granted to have a hand in penning the script of our lives. And in the writing, the question is not the availability of the paper or the pen. The question is the wisdom to use them rightly. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Ellysetta was sitting at the secretary in Rain's suite, penning a note to her parents, when Bel burst through the doors. The other members of the quintet followed so swiftly that all five warriors nearly ended up in a heap on the floor. They were breathless and flushed, perspiration trickling down the sides of their faces.
Kieran bent over, hands on his knees, and dragged air into his lungs. "Well done,brothers. We beat the smug chervil."
"You all look like you could use a drink." Cool and unwinded, Gaelen smiled at the new arrivals from the sofa near the window. "Water? Or perhaps something a little stronger to help you regain your strength? — C.L. Wilson

Tread lightly on your partner's heart. It was given to you for safekeeping. — Alexandra Katehakis

Information Theory would inform a mechanical calculator in much the same way as, say, fluid dynamics would inform the hull of a ship. — Neal Stephenson

Charlotte Bronte borrowed liberally and sloppily from Joseph Sheridan le Fanu when penning Jane Eyre. The originality of this classic novel is tarnished as a result. — Andrew Barger

The hand of God is wonderfully evident at those times when He pens stories whose lines we ourselves are far too fearful to pen or whose imaginations are far too limited to envision. And I would unashamedly suggest that the Christmas story is that very story. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Lux's frequent forged excuses from phys. ed. She always used the same method, faking the rigid t's and b's of her mother's signature and then, to distinguish her own handwriting, penning her signature, Lux Lisbon, below, the two beseeching L's reaching out for each other over the ditch of the u and barbed-wire x. — Jeffrey Eugenides