Speech Writer Quotes

#1. I met Jon Lovett, who was just coming off of three years of being a presidential speech writer and had just arrived here to be a comedy writer in Hollywood. I thought he was super green, in terms of this world, but he knows so much about the world that we're attempting to write about.

Josh Gad

#2. If you're a speech writer for a president, you don't really see all that much of him because there's so many layers between you and him. But with a vice president, it's different.

Christopher Buckley

#3. Ted Sorrenson, JFK's presidential speech writer, when asked how it came about that he wrote the "ask not what you can do ... " speech, he would answer 'ask not.'

Peggy Noonan

#4. If you can come up with a snappy little slogan, then you have a future in winning tagline competitions or being a political speech writer.

Mark Victor Hansen

#5. How do you know that?" "Maybe I'm a fucking detective,

Tom Robbins

#6. Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.

John Dos Passos

#7. A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
[Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]

Susan Sontag

#8. I don't think there's a mountain that can't be climbed. I don't believe in giving up. It's just that sometimes when you get to the top of your own particular mountain, the view isn't always what you expected.

Glenn Ogura

#9. The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
[Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech]

John Steinbeck

#10. Just as Jimmy Stewart and Tyrone Power get 50 percent of the profits, so do I.

Alan Ladd

#11. Among the many queer things about the American economy is this: A writer can get more money for a bungling speech at a bankrupt college than he can get for a short-story masterpiece. What's more, he can sell the speech over and over again, and no one complains.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#12. LUBOV. I'm quite sure there wasn't anything at all funny. You oughtn't to go and see plays, you ought to go and look at yourself. What a grey life you lead, what a lot you talk unnecessarily.

Anton Chekhov

#13. Everyone asks for freedom for himself,
The man free love, the businessman free trade,
The writer and talker free speech and free press.

Robert Frost

#14. Alliteration seems to offend people.

Dean Koontz

#15. When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.

Barbara Tuchman

#16. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Oscar Wilde

#17. When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.

Orhan Pamuk

#18. Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and obscurity and must be used with skill.

Bergen Evans

#19. Genuine bravery for a writer ... It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer's conscience.

Murong Xuecun

#20. It is difficult to call myself a writer, even when I stand at a podium to receive a prize, I feel uncomfortable calling myself a writer - I am merely a word criminal.

Murong Xuecun

#21. Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.

William Osler

#22. Thea is kind and impulsive and very stupid. I'm not sure, sometimes, why she is still alive.

Rosamund Hodge

#23. The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

W. Somerset Maugham

#24. Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.

Criss Jami

#25. For the introvert, conversation can be a very limited forum for self-expression. When a song moves you, a writer "gets" you, or a theory enlightens you - you and its creator are connecting in a realm beyond sight or speech.

Laurie A. Helgoe

#26. All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions.

Joseph Conrad

#27. And remember whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, fine artist or a cartoonist, writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer... whatever you do, you have a thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.

Neil Gaiman

#28. I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.

Francis Ford Coppola

#29. Jesus is the model for living a life of radical love.

Glenn Hager

#30. The bigoted sectarian, whoever he may be, divides the world into two classes; those who, with zeal and blind faith, accept his dogmas and those who do not. The first he calls "brother, "and the second class he regards as enemies who must be persecuted.

Anonymous

#31. The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.

John Dos Passos

#32. It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.

Tom Wolfe

#33. Let every
writer
tell his
own
lies
That's freedom
of the
press.

Norman Mailer

#34. What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, mouldering books.

Andrei Sinyavsky

#35. Surprise is when a prime minister is assassinated during his speech. Suspense is when an assassin lurks while the prime minister speaks. Balancing surprise and suspense is the job of the thriller writer.

Ashwin Sanghi

#36. Jews, listen to me,' she cried. I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames.

Elie Wiesel

#37. Every writer's difficult journey is a movement from silence to speech. We must be intensely private and interior in order to find a voice and a vision - and we must bring our work to an outside world where the market, or public outrage, or even government censorship can destroy our voice.

Sara Paretsky

#38. I charge you as I was charged. Don't waste your life. Don't allow your body's weakness to be a weakness of your spirit. Repay your debt of freedom. You have the key.

Michael Chabon

#39. And Sanderson?" "Are you kidding? I bet his girlfriend is a dominatrix or something." "Or his boyfriend." "No, he's so not cool enough to be gay." She was very funny.

Mary Calmes

#40. There is no such thing as realistic dialogue. If you [simply recorded] the real conversation of any people and played it back from the stage, it would be impossible to listen to. It would be redundant ... The good dialogue writer is the one who can give you the impression of real speech.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz