Migration gives a blank cheque to put anything you don't feel like addressing in the memory hold. No neighbours can go against the monster narrative of your family.
It's a marvellous life, a gregarious life that we've had. We're very lucky in that way. Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?'
When I have a day off, I won't spend it at a Hollywood party. I'd rather be at home with paints and a blank canvas.
I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'
It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.
I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.
Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
No, I don't autograph blank slips, checks, or stickers, and certainly no books without me in them.
You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.
Babies are smart. They can tell the difference between a responsive face and a blank face, wiped clean of emotion.
Kevin Keegan said if he had a blank sheet of paper, five names would be on it.
I was embarrassed when a businessman friend asked, 'What's the yearly budget of your talk show? What's the per-episode budget?' And I looked at him with these blank, typical-model eyes and said, 'I don't know.' I call myself a businesswoman, and I don't know that?
My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time, and there were these big bay windows, and there was the blue in the sky, and the sun on the trees, and it was drizzling.
Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen's tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!
I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.
Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.
Finding the discipline, the motivation, the focus, the passion to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen every day and then to make it come alive with characters and with plot is incredibly exciting and at the same time terrifying and frustrating, and sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes really hard.
A blank wall of social and professional antagonism faces the woman physician that forms a situation of singular and painful loneliness, leaving her without support, respect or professional counsel.
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
I told them I wouldn't sign a blank cheque.
It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.
My idea of fun is to sit looking at a blank wall in a cottage, making up stories in utter silence. The thought of going back to work in an office is horrendous.
My favorite thing is to be alone in a room with a blank paper in front of me and the time to fill it.
I don't think there is anything wrong with white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.
I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.
Make sure that when you look at your plate, it's a beautiful blank canvas to start with, and you want lots of color on there. You want to make sure you have whole grains and protein. It should not be beige in color; it should be green and bright red, and orange and yellow.
The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.
I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'
I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing.
Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.
There are a lot of people, who want to be writers, who stumble at a blank page. You could imagine an algorithm that could give writers a first draft or a starter kit, so it could enable people to be more prolific in their writing.
As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.
The worst thing is the blank page at the start. Then the horrible things written on the blank page. Then deciding whether or not to throw out those horrible things: lame scenes, lame characters, bad ideas.
In 2012, I received a phone call from the family of Arsala Rahmani, the Afghan senator with whom I'd become friendly. That morning, a gunman had pulled up alongside Rahmani's vehicle, idling in a crowded intersection, and shot him point blank.
It would absolutely suck if you paid a few bucks for a book only to find that on the first page it said, 'Once upon a time they all lived happily ever after' and the rest of the book was blank.
My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.
