To me, those are the greatest treasures – the personal letters between my parents.
I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they’re going on to read another book. I’m thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.
That something extra, I believe, is a certain humanity that comes from upbeat and positive human interest letters and success stories. Advertisers like to be associated with those qualities.
I’m an advocate of the great Dr. Johnson, the English man of letters who said that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I remember when I worked with Fassbinder in Germany, actors wrote letters to him. But you see, a director wants to discover you himself. He doesn’t want the actor to say, ‘oh, I’d love to work with you’ – the actor says that to other people, too.
I get letters every year from women who think Valentine’s Day is an empty exercise, but are ironically pretty exercised when their boyfriends neglect or forget it.
Now I know that that is just the phenomena of eating this way. Most all of my letters say I hit a plateau and then one morning I woke up and the melt had happened.
In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
I’m always mystified by the day-to-day workings of entities like Twitter that provide framework but not content, but I suppose it could be compared to the U.S. Postal Service, which manages to keep a lot of people employed doing lots of stuff other than writing letters.
A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely.
I get a lot of letters. Not only from children but from adults, too. Almost every week, every month, clippings come in from some part of the world where ducks are crossing the street.
I only wrote two fan letters in my life. One was to Bette Davis. And one was to Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on ‘Welcome Back, Kotter.’ And Ron did not write me back, but Bette Davis did.
Since I was 20 years old, I’ve been a kind of corporation. I’d wake up in the morning and my job was to be ‘Bonnie Raitt’ in capital letters.
I’m really in touch with my fans. Through their emails, letters and stories is how I decide what music I’m going to perform.
The letters I get from people, a lot of people are very appreciative. I get stacks of letters. I’ll do an event, and all the kids will send me all kinds of letters, and that right there is enough motivation to keep doing it.
My mother was a very talented artist. When she was in jail, we’d write letters back and forth; that was pretty much the only form of communication we had.
Politicians of all kinds think there’s some running in talking tough about children’s reading. They think that if they announce to the public that some kind of daily drilling on sounds and letters is to be brought in, the problem of children’s reading will be solved.
In 2004 after winning my first Olympic gold medal I was featured in magazines as an eligible bachelor. Soon after I started receiving unique and odd fan mail, mainly from female prisoners. I’ve gotten prison art and love letters throughout the years.
Baseball, boxing, handball – sooner or later every game gets compared to narrative, but only in football are the plays perfectly linear, drawn up with letters, and only in football is the field itself lined like a sheet of notebook paper.
I would say that one of the things that encouraged me so much when I became elected to the leadership was the letters I received from fathers of daughters, saying that, ‘My daughter can now do many more things because of what you did.’
I’m very, very used to hearing no – repeatedly! – and through my experience founding startups, I’ve learned to view those two little letters not as a final roadblock but as a problem to be solved.
Two dads have sent me letters that said my books changed their daughters’ lives. I send them packages with T-shirts and posters because, come on… that’s the coolest.
I’m really into architecture, I’m a member of the Brutalist Appreciation Society; I’m a member of the Postmodern Society. I write letters to save buildings.
I had never thought of myself as a dramatist, and, for really good technical results, the thought came too late: a man of letters has become too wordy to write economically for the stage.
I used to get so many letters from students about the ending of ‘Pro Femina.’ So I had a stamp made that said ‘irony, irony, irony’ to put on a postcard and mail it back.
I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown.
Twitter is a wonderful device. And I call it a device, but there are people that are addicted to it now. That’s not good. You’re really not very interesting using only so many letters.
When I go in, I find that it is not a lab but an office. There are a pile of letters to answer, phone numbers to call up, people waiting to have an interview, routine work that must be done.
My number-one website is brainpickings.org. It opens you up to different authors and gives insights into the literary world. Reading about the love letters novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote to his wife Vera blew my mind. Fascinating.
Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
What I did, you know, being away from my family, letting so many people down. I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn’t my life.
I get letters from kids, teenagers and young girls who just want to be Mac. I’ve had quite a few people actually say that they’re going to become a Marine or a JAG lawyer because of me… the character. I think that’s pretty cool!
During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was.
My songs are just little letters to me.
Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season. All great men of letters have therefore been enthusiastic walkers.
I’ve always published a range of responses to my work in the letters section of my comic book.
May God forgive me, but the letters of the alphabet frighten me terribly. They are sly, shameless demons – and dangerous! You open the inkwell, release them; they run off – and how will you ever get control of them again!
At a young age, I realized that getting letters is exciting.
Most well-known serial killers have victims numbering in the dozens, have sent taunting letters to the police or have done bizarre things to the bodies.
I’d like to take a course in writing. I’m not the best writer in the world. I’d like to write more neatly, even though people don’t send many handwritten letters these days.
I would always be embarrassed to read out loud in class because I would transpose words and letters and things.
The number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-three. ‘I love you.’ Isn’t that wonderful?
Come to think of it, even though I’ve received tons of fan letters and presents from everyone, I’ve never written anyone back. How rude of me!
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
I can’t tell you how many letters I get from grandmothers who say, ‘It’s the only thing I can talk to my 15-year-old grandson about.’ The Lakers are more than just a basketball team to this city. They’re part of this community.
The stories are success stories. The letters from listeners often touch the heart and can be inspiring.
I entreat students of letters and other scholars to obey their masters in things good, to imitate them, and diligently apply themselves to letters for the sake of God’s honour and their own salvation and that of other men.
I think that was one of the things that happened, especially in Ireland, that you left in order to improve yourself, and you couldn’t write home and tell people, ‘Look, I’m really lonely,’ because you’d realize how much those letters were going to matter, that you needed to put good news or uplifting news into them.
The editorial page is where you’ll find our opinions, while the letters columns and the space for Op-Ed contributors are a forum for debate and discussion.
The Bible is not just one book, but an entire library, with stories, songs, poetry, letters and history, as well as literature that might more obviously qualify as ‘religious.’
One of my great regrets, and I don’t have many, is that I spent too long putting people’s status and reputation ahead of their more important qualities. I learned far too late in life that a long list of letters after someone’s name is no guarantee of compassion, kindness, humour, all the far more relevant stuff.
