Quotes & Sayings About Written Letters

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

That stranger handed me a letter written in my beloved's tears. I opened it, and the letters faded away just like his love for me. — Natalya Vorobyova

The economic structure of capitalist society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former ... [T]he historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire. — Karl Marx

I'd like to return to prose after a fifteen-year hiatus. An epistolary novella maybe. A man went into the mountains fifteen years ago to write the following letter to a woman: "Dear B., I'd like to strike you down with an iron rod. Maybe I love you. If you feel the same way and your wishes conform to mine, then please please get in touch with me posthaste. We'll discuss this matter together and make the necessary arrangements if everything works out. With warm wishes, Your Bernd." The letter is, however, never mailed and never written. In further letters to B. from Bernd, he pursues, among other things, the question: why? The last letter could be the one in which Bernd lets B. know that the matter has been settled since he has just been struck down by a group of women with iron rods. — Urs Allemann

She wanted letters. Real letters written in his handwriting on actual paper that she could hold and keep and read whenever the mood struck her. They were proof, solid and tangible, that someone was thinking about her. — Jenny Han

I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently. — Isabel Allende

Postal officials say that before Christmas they receive tons of letters written to Santa Claus, but after Christmas how few letters of thanks are sent to him! From childhood onward, human beings seem to be characterized by thanklessness. — Robert E.Lee

And now, since I've been governor since last January, I have written numerous letters to the administration in regards to securing our borders with absolutely no response. So we have been facing this crisis, and it's devastating the people of Arizona. And I feel as governor I have a responsibility to protect the citizens. — Jan Brewer

But I have never ceased to think of that girl. I have written to her, but I can not direct the epistle because her name is one of those nine-jointed Russian affairs, and there are not letters enough in our alphabet to hold out. I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when I am awake, but I make a stagger at it in my dreams, — Mark Twain

I have the better right to indulgence herein, because my devotion to letters strengthens my oratorical powers, and these, such as they are, have never failed my friends in their hour of peril. Yet insignificant though these powers may seem to be, I fully realize from what source I draw all that is highest in them. Had I not persuaded myself from my youth up, thanks to the moral lessons derived from a wide reading, that nothing is to be greatly sought after in this life save glory and honour, and that in their quest all bodily pains and all dangers of death or exile should be lightly accounted, I should never have borne for the safety of you all the burnt of many a bitter encounter, or bared my breast to the daily onsets of abandoned persons. All literature, all philosophy, all history, abounds with incentives to noble action, incentives which would be buried in black darkness were the light of the written word not flashed upon them. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Has he written to you?'
'He writes frequently.'
'Shew me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature. — Stendhal

Time lost can never be recovered ... and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere. — Erik Larson

Real writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response ... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself. — Malcolm Forbes

Sin-cere. Since the days of Michelangelo, sculptors had been hiding the flaws in their work by smearing hot wax into the cracks and then dabbing the wax with stone dust. The method was considered cheating, and therefore, any sculpture "without wax" - literally sine cera - was considered a "sincere" piece of art. The phrase stuck. To this day we still sign our letters "sincerely" as a promise that we have written "without wax" and that our words are true. — Dan Brown

How endless is that volume which God hath written of the world! Every creature is a letter, every day a new page. — Joseph Hall

But I also believe there is enormous value in the piece of writing that goes no further than the one person for whom it was intended, that no combination of written words is more eloquent than those exchanged in letters between lovers or friends, or along the pale blue lines of private diaries, where people take communion with themselves. — Betsy Lerner

In small letters, someone has written NEVER FORGET on one of the slats. I know it's supposed to be a pledge, but it feels like a curse. Don't we have to forget some of it? Don't we have to forget this feeling? If we don't, how will we live? — David Levithan

Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature. — C.S. Lewis

After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since. — Joseph Heller

If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend. — Heloise D'Argenteuil

Found, except for X. I and U are used for J and V. There was no rune for Q (use CW); nor for Z (the dwarf-rune may be used if required). It will be found, however, that some single runes stand for two modern letters: th, ng, ee; other runes of the same kind ( ea and st) were also sometimes used. The secret door was marked D . From the side a hand pointed to this, and under it was written: The last two runes are the initials of Thror and Thrain. The moon-runes read — J.R.R. Tolkien

If, somewhere, any possible world can exist, then somewhere there is any letter that could possibly be written. Somewhere, all those checks really were in the mail. — Terry Pratchett

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. — C.S. Lewis

You do know we're officially the talk of the town," I say to Tucker. He might as well have taken a marker to my forehead and written PROPERTY OF TUCKER in big black letters.
His eyebrows lift. "Do you mind?"
I reach for his hand and lace his fingers with mine. "Nope."
I'm with Tucker. In spite of my failed purpose and everything, it looks like I'm actually going to get to keep him. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. — Cynthia Hand

Ignorance could be said is written in bold letters all over the institution that is supposed to be a shining light to the world — Sunday Adelaja

She made each suture perfectly - one neat stitch after another - until they were lined up across Archer's wounds like sharp black letters, as if every set of stitches was a healing word Doc had written to keep his skin together. There — Traci Chee

Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close. — Robert Benchley

The universe cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. This — Marcus Du Sautoy

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book. — Jeanette Winterson

The skull sat on top of an old Stop sign. Someone had painted the surface of the octagon white and written KEEP OUT across it in large jagged letters. A reddish-brown splatter stained the bottom edge, looking suspiciously like dried blood. I leaned closer. Yep, blood. Some hair, too. Human hair.
Curran frowned at the sign. "Do you think he's trying to tell us something?"
"I don't know. He's being so subtle about it. — Ilona Andrews

But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language. — Pierre Boulle

A similar tradition on the creative power of letters forms the basis of the following midrash on Job 28:11.... This brings us to the text that played so important a part in the development of the golem concept: the Book of Yetsirah or the Book of Creation.... We do not know the exact date of this enigmatic text,.... We can only be sure that it was written by a Jewish Neo-Pythagorean some time between the third and sixth century. — Gershom Scholem

Love could be immortalized. It could be remembered and written forever into the world, inscribed on some inanimate object. It could be wonderful words given by a loved one, or simple letters combined to show an unbroken bond." Alexis from "The Shoreline — Lindsay Chamberlin

Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven :- That is by letters written with their quills. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The start date and the end date are always the important bits on the gravestones, written in big letters. The dash in between is always so small you can barely see it. Surely the dash should be big and bright and amazing, or not, depending on how you had lived. — Brooke Davis

Now everybody who knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a business letter does not deserve the paper on which it is written unless it contains at least one significant phrase that is worth waking up in the night to remember and think about. — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

I shook my head and stood up from my seated position. I walked over to the desk and looked at the writing Caleb was talking about. Bronagh Murphy was written in capital letters while the rest was in lower case letters.

I'd bet my life that Bronagh carved her name into the desk over the years in school, and Nico added the rest to it when he moved here.

What a fucker.

I snickered to myself as I took out my phone, took a picture of it, and sent it to Nico and Bronagh with the caption: Vandalising school property. I'm ashamed to know both of you. — L.A. Casey

I was right when I said a very long time ago that our age would leave few living documents behind it: it was rare for anyone to keep a diary, letters were short and businesslike--"I'm alive and well"--and few memoirs were written. There are many reasons for this. Let me mention just one, not perhaps recognized by everybody: we were too often at loggerheads with our own past to give it proper thought. Within the half-century, our ideas on people and events have changed many times; conversations were broken off in mid-sentence; thoughts and feelings could not but be affected by circumstances. — Ilya Ehrenburg

She wears a Val Surf T-shirt and boys' boxer shorts and she has a boy's phone number scrawled on her hand. Part of her wants to spit on it and rub it off, and part of her wishes it was written in huge numbers across her belly, his name in gang letters, like a tattoo. — Francesca Lia Block

Know thyself! This is the source of all wisdom, said the great thinkers of the past, and the sentence was written in golden letters on the temple of the gods. To know himself, Linnaeus declared to be the essential indisputable distinction of man above all other creatures. I know, indeed, in study nothing more worthy of free and thoughtful man than the study of himself. For if we look for the purpose of our existence, we cannot possibly find it outside ourselves. We are here for our own sake. — Karl Ernst Von Baer

I wish I could read what she's written there. Instead, I pretend the letters are stars. The words, constellations. — Isaac Marion

Never forget that you must die; that death will come sooner than you expect ... God has written the letters of death upon your hands. In the inside of your hands you will see the letters M.M. It means 'Memento Mori' - remember you must die. — John Furniss

Elizabeth had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a letter from Jane on their first arrival at Lambton; and this disappointment had been renewed on each of the mornings that had now been spent there; but on the third her repining was over, and her sister justified, by the receipt of two letters from her at once, on one of which was marked that it had been missent elsewhere. Elizabeth was not surprised at it, as Jane had written the direction remarkably ill. — Jane Austen

But Ruth has not read all the letters I've written to her. She couldn't. Though I wrote them for her, I also wrote them for me, after all, and after she passed away, I placed another box beside the original. In this box are letters written with a shaking hand, letters marked only by my tears, not hers. They are letters written on what would have been yet another anniversary. Sometimes I think about reading them, just as she used to, but it hurts me to think that she never had the chance. — Nicholas Sparks

In a letter (no matter how quickly it is written or honestly or freely or lovingly) it is more possible to be loving and lovable, more possible to reach out and to take in ... I feel I have somehow deceived you into thinking this is really a human relationship. It is a letter relationship between humans ... — Anne Sexton

All my life I have written letters - to our mother, our relatives, a wide circle of friends and acquaintance, to my husband, to you. Correspondence has always been as necessary to my happiness as a well-cooked dinner, and I've found it more sustaining for its generosity: an act of charity that returned to me a hundredfold ... — Delia Sherman

Okay, it's late. I'm about to call you and tell you goodnight, but true to form, I had to get all my thoughts out to you in a letter first. I know I've said it before, but I love that we still write letters to each other. Texts get deleted and conversations fade, but I swear I'll have every single letter you've ever written me until the day I die. #SnailMailForever — Colleen Hoover

WE stowed the wheels, uncapped the sledge-runners, put on our sis, and took off
down, north, onward, into that silent vastness of fire an ice that said in enormous letters of black and white DEATH, DEATH, written right across a continent. The sledge pulled like a feather, and we laughed with joy. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The words he had written wiggled off the page and escaped from the drawer. The letters stacked themselves, one on top of the other. Their towers reached higher and higher until they stood majestic and tall, surrounding Neftali in a city of promise. HUMANITY. SOLIDARITY. GENEROSITY. PEACE. JUSTICE. LOVE. Then a tiny, conceited word came along. Like a hungry termite, it began to gnaw on the tall words, chewing at their foundation, gulping their pulp until they swayed, toppled, and collapsed. All that remained was one fat, satisfied syllable. FEAR. — Pam Munoz Ryan

Angry letters of complaint, redundancy notices and ransom notes will, if written in careful hypotaxis, sound as reasonable, measured and genial as a good dose of rough Enlightenment pornography. — Mark Forsyth

Although an impressive amount of business and social interaction takes place over the telephone and fax, by e-mail, or in person today, the well-written letter remains a staple of business success and one of the strongest connecting links between human beings. — Rosalie Maggio

Writing letters ... means to denude oneself before the ghosts, something for which they greedily wait. Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.
[Kafka to Milena] — Kafka, Franz

The page on which I wrote is the second page in section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants, in the old edition of the triple combination. On the bottom of the page, in capital letters, is written the word REPENTANCE. And then an arrow leads to a notation that reads: Greek word. To have a new mind. — Henry B. Eyring

It was a blessing and also a curse of handwritten letters that unlike email you couldn't obsessively reread what you'd written after you'd sent it. You couldn't attempt to un-send it. Once you'd sent it it was gone. It was an object that no longer belonged to you but belonged to your recipient to do with what he would. You tended to remember the feeling of what you'd said more than the words. You gave to object away and left yourself with the memory. That was what it was to give. — Ann Brashares

Finally Anna picked up the letters again, searched through them, fastened her eyes on Katri, and said, "This is wrong! Here you're not me! If a child is mad at her parents it's no comfort that the parents may be having troubles of their own. That's the wrong comfort! I never would have written that. Parents have to be strong and perfect of the child can't beliece in them. You'll have to fix it."
Katri's reaction was suddenly vehement. "But how can they rely on what's not reliable? For how many years do we fool these children into believing in something they shouldn't believe in? They have to learn early early, or they';; never manage on their own. — Tove Jansson

It is unlikely that Percy would have written my mother after her return from Europe, and, had she written, the letter would have been destroyed, since that family had a crusading detestation of souvenirs. Letters, photographs, diplomas - anything that authenticated the past was always thrown into the fire. — John Cheever

When I'm dealing with the 18th century, as I do in 'The Firebird,' the difficulty isn't only finding what a woman did, it's finding her at all. Most of the sources I'm dealing with - letters and memoirs and written reports of the day - have been written by men. — Susanna Kearsley

What will happen to those who stone the prophets and persecute the masters? His fate is written in flaming letters on each page of the history. — Frank Harris

Prayer is not adult letters written to Santa Claus, and God is not some parent-like figure up in the sky who's going to take care of us. — John Shelby Spong

A similar lack of concern about Jesus's earthly origins can be found in the first gospel, Mark, written just after 70 C.E. Mark's focus is kept squarely on Jesus's ministry; he is uninterested either in Jesus's birth or, perhaps surprisingly, in Jesus's resurrection, as he writes nothing at all about either event. The early Christian community appears not to have been particularly concerned about any aspect of Jesus's life before the launch of his ministry. Stories about his birth and childhood are conspicuously absent from the earliest written documents. The Q material, which was compiled around 50 C.E., makes no mention of anything that happened before Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. The letters of Paul, which make up the bulk of the New Testament, are wholly detached from any event in Jesus's life save his crucifixion and resurrection (though Paul does mention the Last Supper). — Reza Aslan

The mystery of writing advertisements consists mainly in saying in a few plain words exactly what it is desired to say, precisely as it would be written in a letter or told to an acquaintance. — George P. Rowell

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters, written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you! What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love! What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun — William Makepeace Thackeray

How strange and unnatural destiny is. I married a man eight years younger than myself, and according to the law of nature I should have been the first to die, with Him at my side. Instead, it was my destiny to witness His death.'
In speaking of Giuseppe, she always wrote Him, with a capital letter. Her style was prolix, repetitive, but with a certain academic nobility; and her handwriting was elongated, fine, even elegant. (However, in her final decline, her letters grew shorter and her written words, all shaky and twisted, groped across the page, uncertain of their direction.) — Elsa Morante

For centuries the writing-desk has contained sheets fit precisely for the communication of friends. Masters of language, poets of long ages, have turned from the sheet that endures to the sheet that perishes, pushing aside the tea-tray, drawing close to the fire (for letters are written when the dark presses around a bright red cave), and addressed themselves the task of reaching, touching, penetrating the individual heart. — Virginia Woolf

If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life. — Joyce Maynard

The act of sending a letter is an act of generosity, even if, in retrospect, it might seem reckless. Why regret one's generosity? Why regret one's impulsiveness, one's misjudgment of others? The inevitable discovery that someone is selling letters you'd written in trust is simply to discover an obvious human truth: there are those who don't cherish us as we'd cherished them, and had wished to be cherished by them. — Joyce Carol Oates

With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a poor discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable. — Robert Walser

Miles just smiled and felt her love flow around his own. Yet inside his love was a rock, and it had the words "payback is sweet" written in large letters on it. He laughed and she looked up at him and saw the hard glint in his eyes. "Uh oh!" was all she said. He laughed again deep in his chest. She kissed him happily. She sucked at his throat. She, as much as he, would enjoy the struggle that would follow.
Part of the joy of their love was this constant battle to top the other. Kate was excellent at beginning these battles and sometimes even won them. Yet her weakness was that she submitted naturally. She knew it and he knew it. From her point of view the skill of the game was in keeping his Dom side distracted enough so she could submit to him before he took her. Miles smiled as he realised that whoever won was largely irrelevant to their love. Yet he liked to win; and so did she. (Journey Into Submission, eXtasy) — Khul Waters

During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was. — Marie Curie

The effervescence of the previous months was losing its splendor, like the faded letters of the posters that, in these same bars, written by the same men, still recalled the Great Plans: DANCE IS THE BROTHEL'S WAITING ROOM; THE TAVERN WEAKENS CHARACTER; THE BAR DEGENERATES THE SPIRIT: LET'S CLOSE THEM! — Leonardo Padura

Paul commands: 'Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the Traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter.' From this it is clear that they did not hand down everything by letter, but there is much also that was not written. Like that which was written, the unwritten too is worthy of belief. So let us regard the Tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a Tradition? Seek no further. — Saint John Chrysostom

People no longer write letters. Lacking the leisure, and, for the most part, the ability, they dictate dispatches, and scribble messages. When you are in the humor, you should take a peep at some of the letters written by people who lived long ago. — Joel Chandler Harris

Is it anything to do with this?" she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travel-worn as if it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapored oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words "Don't Panic. — Douglas Adams

I have been in recent years the author of a bestiary and director of some atlas projects; I've written criticism, editorials, reports from a few front lines, letters, a great many political essays ... , more personal stuff, essays for artists' books, and more ... Nonfiction is the whole realm from investigative journalism to prose poems, from manifestos to love letters, from dictionaries to packing lists. — Rebecca Solnit

We took a right at the fork, heading farther north. The charred houses continued. To the right, a large sign nailed to an old telephone post shouted DANGER in huge red letters. Underneath in crisp black letters was written:
IM-1: Infectious Magic Area
Do Not Enter
Authorized Personnel Only
A second smaller sign under the first one, written on a piece of plastic with permanent marker, read:
Keep out, stupid.
"We aren't going to keep out, are we?" Ascanio asked.
"No."
"Awesome. — Ilona Andrews

For not even one person to have ever exhibited this interest in writing nor for any to have so satisfied it is bizarre. Saying this all went on in person is simply insufficient to answer the point: if everything was being resolved in person, Paul would never have written a single letter; nor would his congregations have so often written him letters requesting he write to satisfy their questions - which for some reason always concerned only doctrine and rules of conduct, never the far more interesting subject of how the Son of God lived and died. On the other matters Paul was compelled to write tens of thousands of words. If he had to write so much on those issues, how is it possible no one ever asked for or wrote even one word on the more obvious and burning issues of the facts of Jesus' life and death? — Richard Carrier

The catch is that for most people the New Testament is taken as proof for the conventional picture of Christian origins, and the conventional picture is taken as proof for the way in which the New Testament was written. . . . For this reason the New Testament is commonly viewed and treated as a charter document that came into being much like the Constitution of the United States. According to this view, the authors of the New Testament were all present at the historic beginnings of the new religion and collectively wrote their gospels and letters for the purpose of founding the Christian church that Jesus came to inaugurate. Unfortunately for this view, that is not the way it happened. — Burton L. Mack

I'd felt obligated to get Ian a Christmas present. A chunk of coal sat in a brightly wrapped box under the tree, his name written in big bold letters on the front of it.
Ian might be family, but he still had been a very naughty boy this year. — Jeaniene Frost

The length of the friendship never brought astonishment. After all, the
majority of Baby Boomers could likely claim a long-standing friendship in their lives. No, it was always the letters: the-pen-on-paper, inside a-stamped-envelope, mailed-in-a-mailbox letter that was awe inspiring.
"You've been writing a letter every week for almost thirty years?"
The question always evokes disbelief, particularly since the dawn of the
Internet and email. We quickly correct the misconception.
"Well, at least one letter, but usually more. We write each other three or four letters a week. And we never wait for a return letter before beginning another."
Conservatively speaking, at just three letters a week since 1987, that
would equal 4,368 letters each, but we'd both agree that estimate is much
too low. We have, on occasion, written each other two letters in a single
day. — Mary Potter Kenyon

I think. Therefore, I am. I think."
- Anonymous

I found this written in tiny letters in the grout between the wall tiles above a urinal in a restroom at the University of Washington, circa 1980. I don't know if Descartes would have approved but I thought it was brilliant. — Gary Val Tenuta

The overall affect of the man was just a shade subtler than a sandwich board with the words BETTER THAN YOU written out in big block letters. — William Ritter

It's not the letter she imagined she would write, but once you start, all the other letters you've ever written in your life have a way of creeping in. — Susan Elderkin

The Bible isn't an answer book. It isn't a self-help manual. It isn't a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God's interaction with humanity. — Rachel Held Evans

The loss of letters in today's world is one of the great losses we are experiencing, though we shan't know the full extent of it for another twenty or thirty years when we'll wish we had those letters never written. — David Burnett

Observe the great Advantage and Benefit, the Privilege and Prerogative that Christ's Servants have beyond all others; Christ writes his Letters to them; there is not a word written to Kings and great Men; but it is to shew his Servants things to come to pass — James Durham

I love the silent era because you can see the rules being written, the grammar of film being created. Most of my films are in some way love letters to the silent era. — Dave McKean

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time. — Mark Twain

My mother still deludes herself that the letters are written out of more than a desire to spend as little time in our company as possible. She likes to think he is still hers. — Cat Hellisen

received his recent letters, Franz said, "That's strange, I've written to you so often." He spoke cryptically, using slang. "I've been on the horn with Papi. He hasn't been able to raise Madi since the Frogs packed it in." "I tried her from Villars," Alex replied. "The maid said they were on the road." She thought of what Polly had suggested about a bolt hole. "Maybe they decided to stay down south for a while." "I would go to find them, but I'm stuck here until the end of next term. — Harriet Segal

The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting? — Samuel Richardson

I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations
a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I have to admit that Emily is a cute kid, and I instantly understand why Ronnie has written me so many letters about his daughter-why he loves her so much. I start to think about having children with Nikki someday and I become so happy that I give little Emily a kiss on the forehead, as if she were Nikki's baby and I was her father. And then I kiss Emily's forehead again and again, until she giggles. — Matthew Quick

On their faces an expression like the letters of a legend, written around the base of a statue praising duty, gratitude, fidelity, love of England ... — Virginia Woolf

The poem doesn't have stanzas, it has a body, the poem doesn't have lines,/ it has blood, the poem is not written with letters, it's written/ with grains of sand and kisses, petals and moments, shouts and/ uncertainties. — Jose Luis Peixoto

Every form seems to be derived from another, all figures being derived from Alif which is originally derived from a dot and represents zero, nothingness (In Arabic the zero is written as a dot.) It is that nothingness which creates the first form Alif. It is natural for everyone when writing to make a dot as soon as the pen touches the paper, and the letters forming the words hide the origin. In like manner the origin of the One Being is hidden in His manifestation. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

He was carrying a suitcase with clothing in order to stay and another just like it with almost two thousand letters that she had written him. They were arranged by date in bundles ties with colored ribbons, and they were all unopened. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I glare at him and sigh. "Don't you understand what a book is?"
"Obviously."
"Then how can it be boring? It's not just twenty-six little letters all mushed together to make words that link together to tell a story. It's the creation of another world where anything can happen and anyone can be whoever they want to be. It's a crazy, special kind of magic that can transport you out of the real world, to anywhere you want to go. It doesn't matter if it's a made-up universe or it's written in a city you can drive to within an hour. It's what happens within the pages that makes reading so...not boring."

-Emma Hart "Dirty Little Rendezvous (The Burke Brothers Spin-Off #1). — Emma Hart

U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U. S. A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of an address when you — John Dos Passos

I squeezed her hand and said nothing. I knew little about Keats or his poetry, but I thought it possible that in his hopeless situation he would not have wanted to write precisely because he loved her so much. Lately I'd had the idea that Clarissa's interest in these hypothetical letters had something to do with our own situation, and with her conviction that love that did not find its expression in a letter was not perfect. In the months after we'd met, and before we'd bought the apartment, she had written me some beauties, passionately abstract in the ways our love was different from and superior to any that had ever existed. Perhaps that's the essence of a love letter, to celebrate the unique. I had tried to match her, but all that sincerity would permit me were the facts, and they seemed miraculous enough to me: a beautiful woman loved and wanted to be loved by a large, clumsy, balding fellow who could hardly believe his luck. — Ian McEwan

Mara gave you my letter?"
"Yes."
"You must have been astonished." She had exposed her heart in that letter.
His eyebrows shot up. "'Astonished' is a mild word for it."
"But you came - so you must have read the other letters. They should have prepared you a little."
"I received no other letters. I had no idea you were in this part of the world."
She shook her head in confusion. "Then how did you know to come?"
"Yasmeen and I were in New Eden again - I have written that story for you in another letter - when a supply ship arrived carrying the rumor that Zenobia Fox was under the protection of the Kraken King. Needless to say, we abandoned New Eden and flew to Krakentown and full steam. — Meljean Brook