Deborah Tannen Quotes

In my own writing, I avoid 'female' and try to say 'woman' because I feel that the word 'female' has connotations of not just biology but also non-human mammals. The idea of 'female' to me is more appropriate for a female animal.

Deborah Tannen

• Writing
• Animal

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.

  

  Walter Kirn
  • Writing
  • Future
  • Past

• We're more interested in someone writing a really great answer that's going to be read by thousands or tens of thousands of people over the next few years as it stays on Quora and as it gets distributed on the Internet.

  

  Adam D'Angelo
  • People
  • Great
  • Writing

• My favorite animal is a polar bear. They're going extinct, and I really don't want that to happen.

  

  Quvenzhane Wallis
  • Want
  • Animal
  • Bear

• Writing an essay is like a school assignment: I have my topic, I organize my thoughts, and I write it. I have complete control over what I'm doing. Writing a novel is like setting out on a journey without knowing who or what I'll encounter, how long it's going to take, or where I'm going to end up.

  

  Tawni O'Dell
  • Up
  • Long
  • Writing

• The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

  

  A. R. Rahman
  • People
  • Different
  • Writing

• I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.

  

  Sammy Cahn
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Professional

• My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.

  

  Kate Atkinson
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Women

• Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.

  

  Dan Brown
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Journey

• Writing does produce a very unique satisfaction. There are times when I'm writing that it's frustrating or appalling or difficult, but when it goes well, it goes really well, and there is a feeling of rightness, like I'm doing the thing I was meant to do, almost in a mystical way, like I'm at an appropriate angle to the world.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • World
  • Writing
  • Feeling

• I'm quite adept at writing two or sometimes even three stories at once. So if I get stuck on one story, I switch the next and let my subconscious work on unraveling any plot problems from another story.

  

  Zara Cox
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Problems

• Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.

  

  Quentin Tarantino
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Hell

• Arendt did have a certain snobbishness, though in some of her writing she expressed more democratic attitudes.

  

  Barbara Sukowa
  • Writing
  • Democratic
  • Attitudes

• I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • Writing
  • Mind
  • Career

• I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.

  

  Verite
  • People
  • Music
  • Writing

• What do you think will happen in a forced marriage? With an uneducated man, an animal. What would I say, that I am already married? Why would I say it? I never accepted him as my husband in my heart or mind. How I spent a year and a half with him, only I know. And I only did it because of the child.

  

  Qandeel Baloch
  • Mind
  • Heart
  • Why

• The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it.

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Work
  • Thinking
  • Writing

• I found it really hard for a couple of years to do any writing because all I wanted to do was play the fiddle. From the minute I took it up, I just couldn't put it down.

  

  Kate Thompson
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Play

• There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Writing
  • Think
  • Song

• R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele - you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music - it's clear in her writing that that's where it comes from.

  

  Babyface
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Soul

• I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.

  

  Frank McCourt
  • Writing

• Getting ahead in a difficult profession - singing, acting, writing, whatever requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve.

  

  Sofia Villani Scicolone
  • Thinking
  • Writing
  • Couple

• That was the political reality of 1987: Saxophones made you cool. That's real! That really happened in our society!

  

  Christopher Miller
  • Real
  • Society
  • Reality

• I would probably say, 'Don't worry so much about stuff as you grow up.'

  

  Mark Hoppus Blink-182
  • Worry
  • Stuff
  • Grows

• In my own writing, I avoid 'female' and try to say 'woman' because I feel that the word 'female' has connotations of not just biology but also non-human mammals. The idea of 'female' to me is more appropriate for a female animal.

  

  Deborah Tannen
  • Writing
  • Animal