Longevity, for a columnist, is a simple proposition: Once you start, you don’t stop. You do it until you die or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.
There is a great deal of busywork to a writer’s life, as to a professor’s life, a great deal of work that matters only in that, if you don’t do it, your desk becomes very full of papers. So, there is a lot of letter answering and a certain amount of speaking, though I try to keep that at a minimum.
My first job was being a page at ‘The Tonight Show.’ I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he’d done the night before. I thought, ‘I can do that!’ I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.
When I’m sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it’s silence and despair! It’s not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.
I was nominated at first by a group called Justice Democrats. They were trying to essentially field non-corporate candidates in the 2018 midterm election. They were looking for people with a history of community service, and my name had come across their desk, and they called.
I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.
I’m always a great student of writers’ work habits. Balzac sat at his desk dressed in a monk’s robe, and he always had to have a rotten apple on his desk. The smell of the apple inspired him somehow.
All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.
My suspicion is that a lot of these office buildings will start to evolve from being optimized for individual offices or cube space to being hot offices where you decide which day you’re going to come in and then you reserve a desk.
Indeed, in a world of the BlackBerry, remote access and Wi-Fi hotspots on every street corner, it feels particularly outdated that much of our working culture is still dominated by the need to be at our desk for long hours of the day.
When you sit at your desk, if you’re lucky, there’s a moment when you feel empowered to be someone or something else, to leap into another skin.
I’ve found myself at one in the morning just sitting at my desk spending an hour returning emails from the day until like two in the morning. It’s ridiculous, I should be sleeping, or dreaming, or reading a novel.
When I was younger, I avoided exercise or anything strenuous. I didn’t even enjoy walking. As I got older, I spent so much time marking books or sitting at a desk writing that there was no room for exercise – not that I would have bothered anyway.
You may think having a cluttered desk isn’t that big of a deal. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Disorganization can stunt your professional growth and decrease your productivity.
I cheated once on a spelling test. I didn’t know how to spell period. I leaned over the desk and looked at someone else’s paper. I was probably ten or something like that.
To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don’t use a computer when I write, and I don’t use a piano. I’m at a desk writing, and it’s very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.
It’s easier to sit at your desk and have a bun, but I’ve been really disciplined because I feel like I have to give myself a chance. You can’t let yourself down on that. You have to be mentally sharp in this Premier League.
Learning something new is a fabulous way to be refreshed. When work can grind you down, something about learning a new activity thrills the soul. It reminds you that the world is bigger than your desk and your to-do list.
You’re sitting in the car for many, many minutes a day. Can that be part of your new office? Can it be your new desk, a place where you actually get work done? We believe it can.
I was the most reckless little kid. I only had guy friends. I had a Nintendo, and when I went to normal school, I used to tape it under my desk and then pull it out and play on it.
I have a study at the back of the house, overlooking our garden. It’s tiny, just wide enough to fit my desk in. The walls are covered with pin boards and art postcards from galleries all over the world, including Tate, MoMA, and Lenbachhaus.
There’s already a marriage clock, a career clock, a biological clock. Sometimes being a woman feels like standing in the lobby of a hotel, looking at the dials depicting every time zone in the world behind the front desk – except they all apply to you, and all at once.
On the first day of school, you got to be real careful where you sit. You walk into the classroom and just plunk your stuff down on any old desk, and the next thing you know the teacher is saying, ‘I hope you all like where you’re sitting, because these are your permanent seats.’
There’s nothing romantic about my work… I don’t believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.
We predicted the concept of a telephone that isn’t tied to a wall or a desk. We anticipated that everyone would have a cell phone. We joked that when you’re born you would be assigned a cell phone and if you didn’t answer you had died.
I want to die at my desk.
The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.
Getting the approval of Ric Flair is the wrestling world’s version of Johnny Carson calling you over to the desk after you just crushed a standup set on ‘The Tonight Show.’
I’ve always loved flowers, as a little girl I’d collect flower objects and little flower books. Now I love flowers on my night table and on my desk.
I eat and drink at my desk, but I’m a tidy eater.
I rise near dawn, make a strong cup of coffee, wander to my desk and come fully awake by reading something written the day before.
If I get incensed about some injustice, you can’t make me – I will not just going to sit at my desk, at my computer all the time. I – I might want to march out on that.
I’m at my desk for about 9:30 A.M., and I stay there all day. Then there’s a lot of checking Facebook and eBay and that sort of thing.
A good leader doesn’t get stuck behind a desk.
I had this desk alongside the most beautiful Australian 18-year-old girl with long brown hair, and I got up enough nerve to ask her for a date.
Eighteen holes of match play will teach you more about your foe than 18 years of dealing with him across a desk.
Whether it was a shoe store or working the front desk of a hotel, I was always interacting with people. I’d get that look because I’m half-white and half-Filipino. They could tell I was something, but they really couldn’t tell what I was.
In high school, I interned at my mother’s restaurant and learned the small-business ropes. It was really instructive and taught me to switch contexts quickly, as I contributed to everything from managing the reception desk to building their website.
I have a lot of great racing memories growing up in Europe as a young boy – playing with car parts on my dad’s desk, watching the races on Sunday afternoons to try and spot him on TV, even having the chance to go to Formula 1 races where he was working.
I was never too much into school. I liked lunchtimes and breaks, but nah, I hated sitting at a desk. I was always looking out of the window, looking at my watch, thinking about when I could play football.
I really just like to be at a desk.
People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.
I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, ‘What should I do now?’ It doesn’t work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant.
I’ve got friends who are so good at getting away with things, like going up to the desk to get upgraded on a plane, for example. I haven’t got any of that kind of confidence in those situations. I look so awkward. I act awkward. I’m really apologetic.
If you look at my desk… it’s profoundly disorganised – which is why I can work on search.
If you want to do a talk show on network television, you’re probably going to wind up having a desk and a band, wearing a suit, and having a sidekick. Audiences want to feel comfortable.
My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.
My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called ‘The Southern Planter.’ He didn’t think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I’d seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.
I have a very strict regimen of showing up at my desk at a certain hour with my cup of green tea. It is very quiet. I don’t like having a lot of atmosphere around.
When Ando arrives in the studio, he picks up his pen even before he gets a cup of tea, and he stays seated until the very last train at night. He hardly eats, just nibbles at little balls of rice at his desk.
Insights don’t usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I’m on the move. Or half-asleep.
