Teju Cole Quotes

For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.

Teju Cole

• Writing
• Purpose
• Marketing
• Poet
• Sensations
• Novelists

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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

• It takes me a long time writing books. It takes me about five years to write a book, and when I'm done, the last thing I want to do is to do it again.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Time
  • Long
  • Writing

• Never forget that you only have one opportunity to make a first impression - with investors, with customers, with PR, and with marketing.

  

  Natalie Massenet
  • Opportunity
  • Marketing
  • Never Forget

• Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

  

  Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Writing
  • Heart
  • Done

• One of the worst of errors would be the general admission of the proposition that a Government has no right to interfere for any purpose except for that of affording protection.

  

  Nassau William Senior
  • Government
  • Purpose
  • Worst

• I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

  

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • People
  • Writing
  • Political

• There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

  

  Napoleon Hill
  • Knowledge
  • Desire
  • Purpose

• A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.

  

  Gary Oldman
  • Writing
  • Kids
  • Mother

• I thought writing about somebody current would be a little closer to what I'm used to doing.

  

  Adam Clymer
  • Writing
  • Thought
  • Doing

• 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

• After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

  

  Ornette Coleman
  • Up
  • Time
  • Writing

• Our job as friends, mentors, parents, and writing coaches is not to write anyone's college essay. That's cheating. Plus, it sends a discouraging message to the teenager that he or she can't be trusted with this important assignment. Trust the student to write the essay, but verify that it gets done. Gentle editing and proofreading are allowed.

  

  Kate Klise
  • Important
  • Writing
  • Done

• 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

• Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.

  

  D. J. MacHale
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Interesting

• I'm still very much a believer in the spontaneity of certain kinds of writing. But then you have to eventually, when you're writing a long play, make adjustments along the way - all kinds of adjustments.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Long
  • Writing
  • Play

• I started playing video games, and in 1978 I discovered Dungeons & Dragons and started game-mastering and writing my own adventures and creating my own worlds.

  

  Warren Spector
  • Writing
  • Game
  • Games

• The tough thing about writing is you go into a room alone, you close the door and you do your work.

  

  Randy Wayne White
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Alone

• Interviewing Rei Kawakubo in Tokyo and John Galliano in Paris, both for 'Pop' magazine, were huge for me, not just in learning about fashion and writing but about how little desire I had to be a critic/reporter/journalist/commentator so much as a kind of travel diarist.

  

  Tavi Gevinson
  • Writing
  • Desire
  • Learning

• I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Writing
  • Think
  • Feel

• I think writing in a group, even though it can be a challenge - you have to be on your toes all the time - is the way the best comedy gets written. It's very, very collaborative. A lot of comedy writers are definitely introverted nerds.

  

  Megan Amram
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Comedy

• I used to write out of angst. My writing was quite miserable, quite angry, even when it was funny. It was based on this sadness and tired emotional disdain for the world.

  

  David Thewlis
  • World
  • Writing
  • Funny

• We're brought up to believe in a fairytale-romance sort of way that true love is out there and true loves don't care about what you look like and stuff, just what's down inside. And that's probably true, but what's also true, sadly, is that true loves are very rare and very hard to find.

  

  Mark Waid
  • Up
  • Believe
  • True

• The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

  

  Elif Safak
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Luck

• For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.

  

  Teju Cole
  • Writing
  • Purpose
  • Marketing