I sit in my room at my desk, looking out the window to the yard and waiting for a plot to come to me, to rise slowly in my mind.
I usually choose movies that I would want to see. I appreciate drama and if the right script came across my desk, drama you will see.
When things aren’t working out, we have a tendency to say, ‘Go do other things,’ but you shouldn’t do other things. You need to stay at your desk and continue to try to write. You need to insist on it.
Professionally, I remember Cronkite as a kid growing up, and more so for me, the importance of Cronkite was not him sitting there at the anchor desk, but him out there doing things.
Berlin was the first, the very first to give me an award. I am eternally grateful to them. It sits on my desk – the Silver Bear. All the others are stored away. It’s the only one I look at. It watches me while I work.
Dub has been a big influence in terms of production. It’s inspired so many people and so much music – in terms of music where mixing desk was the instrument. Central to that is the echo chamber, and I think there’s a little bit of a romantic thing there.
You can’t reinvent the wheel. I remember when we first started out at ‘Late Night,’ we were trying to hire directors, and this guy was like, ‘I see you behind a glass desk.’ I don’t. And he’s like, ‘Yeah, the glass desk.’ I go, ‘I don’t really see me as a glass desk guy.’
All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.
Sometimes, when I’m sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing’s coming to me, I remember my fifth-grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said, ‘This is really good.’
One of the biggest mistakes I see in the bedroom is that they plan to be doing things other than sleeping in the bedroom. They will have a desk in there for working, or they’ll have a big shelf in there for storing things. It should be all about relaxing.
My desk is right next to my bed. So I sit on my bed. I write in a big notebook which is on the desk. And if I feel drowsy, I just have to slide into bed.
Nine times out of ten, people consider a nice little Jewish boy the kid who grows up and sits behind a desk preparing your taxes. I’ve certainly broken that stereotype in many ways.
I would rise, monk-like, at 6 A.M., speak to no one, make tea, and go immediately to my desk from which I didn’t move until frills appeared around the edges of my eyes or I heard the sound of a wine bottle being uncorked. It would give the wrong impression to describe these as Writing Days.
My business partner and make-up artist Kim Jacob and I have employed every member of staff, decided where every desk in the office should go, tried every product on our faces.
I remember when I was like 19 years old and I started a desk calendar company to pay for my first short film, just so I could say one day that my daddy didn’t pay for my first short film. And I really established myself in the film festival world.
It’s pointless to have a nice clean desk, because it means you’re not doing anything.
Being in a long-running series is great because it gives you so many opportunities – but at the same time it’s a bit desk jobby: you go to the same place every day, you do the same thing and you play the same character.
I always laugh at these companies that have these rules saying, ‘You’re only allowed to have this or that on your desk.’ It’s no fun to work at a place like that.
My first publication was a haiku in a children’s magazine when I was 9 years old. I received one dollar for it! I gave the check to my dad for Christmas, and he framed it and hung it over his desk.
No trooper, no special forces operative wants to sit behind a desk. We joined up to kick some doors down.
My desk faces the water, and I’m perfectly happy sitting there. I’m never lonely.
I am a terrible mixture of being organized, controlling, but chaotic. My desk is monstrous.
As a writer, I’m mostly at my desk, staring out my window. No one sees me.
A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.
I finished ‘Heartsick’ with my daughter asleep in her bassinet by my desk, a feat that any new mother will tell you cannot be sufficiently praised.
No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.
Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of Luigi and Mario has been running on my monitor. We’ve been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system.
Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.
In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.
I like to sit at my desk… sometimes I get inspiration when I’m going about my normal day-to-day life.
Cancer taught me to live only in the day I’m in. In the moment I’m in. Some moments, I simply ground myself by touching the desk, the table, the wall wherever I am and say, ‘You’re right here. Stay put in this moment.’
David Letterman is the best late-night talk show host right now, hands down, and has been since he first took the desk.
As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I’ve never heard one say, ‘No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.’ They will always say, ‘You don’t like him? I’ve got somebody else.’ They’re totally spineless.
I’ve never sent an email in my life. My kids laugh. I often hand the phone to them and say, ‘Can you text this message to somebody.’ I don’t even have a computer on my desk.
I didn’t really want deadlines and editorial work. I wanted something mechanical and eight hours a day. So I went to work, thinking it was easy – ha, ha – on the complaint desk at the circulation department.
I had a fifth grade teacher who, as a very small way of trying to contain my class clown energy, gave me 10 minutes at the end of class every Friday to present whatever I wanted. A lot of the time, I did an Andy Rooney impression. I would sit at her desk, empty it, and just comment on what was in there.
Ireland starts for me with the end of ‘The Dead,’ which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.
My desk is an antique with bookshelves built into the side. I’ve turned the drawer over to hold a keyboard. We live in a 100-year-old house, and I work in an apartment above the carriage house.
I know how to do the other stuff – the ‘Access’ stuff and go be goofy and all that. That I can do. For me to sit on a desk, when I know on the other network is Bob Costas and Dan Patrick is a change.
I’m a freelance writer, and I work alone at a big desk in the living room of my apartment. There are many days when I don’t utter a single word to anyone but my husband.
I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright.
Helping set the day’s agenda and deciding what we used and editing it, that was a journalistic high point. I liked reporting as well. Just doing the news – the live performance – wasn’t important. Working on the desk was.
I am so organized that it’s dysfunctional. Everything has a place. I am a very visual person, so my environment is important to me. If my environment is messy, I can’t think clearly. I don’t like clutter. A clean desk is a clean mind for me.
When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.
On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.
Before signing any contract, you have to assume that the guy on the other side of the desk is handing you a shifty piece of paper that works to his advantage. I know that sounds cynical, but it’s really that simple.
I work in a room overlooking the river. I try to get to my desk as soon as I’ve fed my cats and chickens. I use a blue 3B pencil and scribble away for about 20 pages before transferring it to the computer.
My photos would not be as high quality without my dad. He’s a contractor, and together we converted an area in our basement into a makeup studio with a desk, a mirror lined with dimmable lights, and storage areas.
I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn’t bring my chairs with me.
For the cable news guest, nothing happens for a while until suddenly everything happens very quickly. After you receive your television face, you stand around for a while, ignored, until you’re sat down at a desk and asked to argue with strangers.
Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.
I didn’t go to school for illustration. I did larger pieces, mostly drawings and paintings, and minored in video, but when I moved to N.Y.C., I didn’t have a studio space anymore and downsized to my desk and started illustrating. I started a greeting card company and sold cards all over the city.
