I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.
Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.
The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.
Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.
We're not militant, but there are certain things that are absolutely secret. There was a pilot printed on red paper, and I read everything on my iPad and have a scanner on my desk for these purposes. I scanned in the script, and red paper script scans in perfectly fine.
When I talk to students or young writers about the importance of being unafraid to take controversial positions, I'm struck by the degree to which they can't entertain a thought, much less commit one to paper, without imagining the cacophony of snark they'll get in response.
When I turned 45, I lay in bed reflecting on all life had taught me. My soul sprang a leak and ideas flowed out. My pen simply caught them and set the words on paper. I typed them up and turned them into a newspaper column of the 45 lessons life taught me. When I hit 50, I added five more lessons and the paper ran the column again.
I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.
That was the - It was an exciting time because it was as though I was sort of tied up in a paper bag or in a gunny sack with a rope around the neck of it, and all of a sudden with the acceptance of that first book everything sort of spilled out!
I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.
I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own.
I read books. Remember those? I read them, on paper.
I was raised by my grandparents, and they always made sure that I had a pencil and some paper, whether we were in the car or at a restaurant. While they were enjoying a nice meal, I would be sitting there drawing funny pictures of the waitress.
With the art therapy, as soon as they saw the paper and crayons coming, we couldn't get it out fast enough. And we told them to draw about the tsunami.
Dreams are like paper, they tear so easily.
My struggle over the years has constantly been, it only takes 10 minutes, or an average shower, to come up with a mini-series or two, but it takes a year to draw them. So for me, it's been just trying to find a way to get all these ideas and all these incidents on paper.
The law requires a paper towel ad to be scrupulously honest, but allows political candidates to lie without reproach. What's wrong with this picture?
An American store is generally a very extensive apartment, handsomely decorated, the roof frequently supported on marble pillars. The owner or clerk is seen seated by his goods, absorbed in the morning paper - probably balancing himself on one leg of his chair, with a spittoon by his side.
Computers are wasteful of paper and time. Once, we'd get documents with a few errors. Now, people make hundreds of copies until each sheet is flawless and memos are duplicated endlessly. Managers get swamped with emails.
I worked also, doing things such as our paper route and, later on, waitressing.
I did a lot of jobs when I was a kid - paper boy, grocery boy, all those things. I guess maybe I got a point of view then.
I went to a Chekhov play with my grandmother, and at the end, I was talking about how the first act was so boring. And my grandmother didn't see that at all. I realized it was because I need, like, the constant images changing. I wrote a paper about this.
If you trade in paper, the notion of many who trade gold - the Ayn Randers - if the financial world comes to an end, they're going to have the gold. If you're playing in ETFs, you're going to have a piece of paper.
An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.
I don't want to sound like Catherine Cookson but I've worked since I was eight, with a paper round and in a fruit and veg shop. Taking a pay cut won't demotivate me, not at all. It's not about money in the first place. It's about the job.
Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.
You see bands putting ads in the paper: 'drummer wanted'. I could never be in a set-up like that.
I don't know any other lifestyle. I get up in the morning and I really do feel that the world is my oyster, and I start that way, the same as I would if I were preparing to write a song: put a blank piece of paper up on the piano and you go for it.
Anything on paper is obsolete!
Paper acts as an eraser on the mind, as soon as you look at what you've written.
All my time not devoted to my master's service was spent either in prayer, or in making experiments in casting different things in moulds made of earth, in attempting to make paper, gunpowder, and many other experiments, that, although I could not perfect, yet convinced me of its practicability if I had the means.
My first acting job happened by accident when I was really young. I was in fifth grade and my teacher saw an ad in the paper and took me to the audition after school and I got the part.
I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.
I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater.
I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper.
I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.
