Written Quotes

Written poetry is different. Best thing is to see it in performance first, then read it. Performance is more provocative.

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.

I can't change the past, and I don't think I would. I don't expect to be understood. I like what I've written, the stories and two novels. If I had to give up what I've written in order to be clear of this disease, I wouldn't do it.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

I'm always looking, as an actor, for activities. I think it's far more interesting to watch what people do than what they say. You always want to watch behavior, because the dialogue as written by our illustrious leaders is great. Eminently playable.

The first song that I ever recorded was written by my mother.

Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.

Just why I sent it to the publishers would be hard to say, but when I had finished it I felt that it was literature, because it is real and because it was well written. And I know that the world wants such things.

For your benefit, learn from our tragedy. It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews. It can also be other people.

I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.

I would like to be proud of having written some poems that will be remembered, but I will never know whether I will have any reason to be proud of that.

I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.

Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.

I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.

I also have a film coming up called Breaking Up, and my part in that was not written for a Latina, and my character is not particularly pretty or sexy or exotic.

I got a cable from New York saying that what I'd written about the growth of Soviet agricultural production didn't make sense because the same levels were reached under the czars. I wanted to confirm it, but by then the censors were on to me.

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

The real thing is, you should be seeing these plays in the Theatre. That's what they were written for. That's where the enjoyment is. Studying them is no enjoyment whatsoever.

I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it.

Obviously Mad TV, SNL are one kind of show, whereas The State belongs to the kind of show that is entirely conceived written and performed by a set group that existed before the TV show.

It is written in the Jewish law book, the Talmud, that only the Jew is human, that Gentiles are only animals.

Someone who does an act. In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist; that is, you participate. It could be a letter written to an editor.

I made a written report which is still today in existence. I have a photocopy of it, and I am saying that in production this aircraft could perhaps substitute for three propeller- driven aircraft of the best existing type. This was my impression.

So much of what you see now in Hollywood is written and directed by committee, and you can see it.

I've been writing an ongoing letter to my children since they were born, full of recollections of their childhoods. I've filled two journals. It's a great thing to do as a mother - you forget a lot as you go along, but reading over what you've written brings all the memories back.

Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.

When we go to the Bible we should keep in mind that the basic principles of the Bible are taught by God, but written down by human beings deprived of modern day knowledge. So there is some fallibility in the writings of the Bible. But the basic principles are applicable to my life and I don't find any conflict among them.

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

I hate biographies which say, I was called to such and such an office, and he offered me so and so, and I got so and so money. I find that very tedious. The best biographies are written by other people.

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.