David Crystal Quotes

Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next.

David Crystal

• Writing

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Quotes to Explore

• When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.

  

  Gabrielle Zevin
  • Writing
  • School
  • Present

• I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.

  

  Ed Westwick
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Poetry

• Writing a tribe is fun. They have their own language, their own slang; they repeat it, and it becomes part of the texture of the play. For a writer, that's thrilling. That's when my pen flies.

  

  Laura Wade
  • Writing
  • Fun
  • Language

• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Writing
  • Learn
  • Start

• I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.

  

  Randy Newman
  • Writing
  • Truth
  • Yourself

• 'The Crumbling of America' should be required viewing for local and national government, not to mention the local and national media who should be keeping their feet to the fire on guarding against disaster.

  

  Rachel Sklar
  • America
  • Government
  • Fire

• Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Book

• Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.

  

  LaToya Jackson
  • People
  • Time
  • Believe

• I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

  

  Dana Spiotta
  • Great
  • Writing
  • Procrastinator

• I love writing songs. I love doing my radio show and talking to the fans and listening to what they have to say, but there's a certain responsibility that comes along with being given the gift of music. I take that seriously, but at the same time I try to use it to do something that makes a difference in a positive way.

  

  Randy Owen
  • Time
  • Music
  • Writing

• The morning is always my best time of the day for writing because that's when my head is best.

  

  Zoe Foster Blake
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Day

• Writing is a form of licensed madness.

  

  Mal Peet
  • Writing
  • Madness
  • Licensed

• When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing.

  

  M. J. Rose
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Dream

• The writing that feels the best to me, I experience sometimes, is a kind of weirdly deep listening - like, it feels like if you just listen hard enough, the next sentence will tell you what it needs to be.

  

  Garth Risk Hallberg
  • Writing
  • Experience
  • Best

• I was at a slight disadvantage in that I had never played in bands or done any performances before, and that's just as important as writing, recording, and putting records out. It's been a lot of hard work, balanced with a lot of pinch-myself moments of touring in crazy parts of the world.

  

  Washed Out
  • World
  • Work
  • Important

• I would love to continue in music, with writing... but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don't need to be blonde when I'm 60!

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Music
  • Kids
  • Person

• I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular.

  

  Orhan Pamuk
  • Believe
  • Writing
  • Art

• I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not.

  

  Fannie Hurst
  • Writing
  • Happy
  • Unhappy

• Some say I'm an overnight success. Well, that was a very long night that lasted about 10 years. But while I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself. I can't worry about genres or markets or what might be commercial or not. That never works.

  

  Kate Morton
  • Long
  • Writing
  • Success

• If all of this, all the life of a stream of water, can be nothing but a pile of atoms, how much more is possible?

  

  Richard Feynman
  • Water
  • Atoms
  • Streams

• A nation is not a budget, no matter how much ideologues want it to be so.

  

  Steven Weber
  • Nation
  • Budget
  • Ideologues

• Tax reform is the legislative challenge of a generation for America. It hasn't been accomplished since 1986, when President Reagan and Congress delivered the most sweeping overhaul of our nation's tax code in American history. 2017 is the year to change that and make history of our own.

  

  Kevin Brady
  • American
  • America
  • History

• The music business is very hard on women over 22. You really have to prove yourself every time you make a record. Are you as vibrant as you used to be? Are you as sexy? So I really want to prove that a woman in her 30s can be all those things and more.

  

  Jody Watley Shalamar
  • Time
  • Music
  • Women

• Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next.

  

  David Crystal
  • Writing