Writing is powerful. Whether it’s a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty International writing letters on behalf of political prisoners, the power of telling stories is usually what causes change.
I used to get, like, 2,000 letters a week at one point.
Listener and reader input is every bit as important as anything any of us can say. We’d be like crazy people chattering in the middle of that empty field that Joe Biden thinks we should stand in to be safe from swine flu if it weren’t for the calls, the letters, the blogs, and the reaction from our audience.
I’m receiving 300 to 500 letters every week from people telling me that God used my stories to save their marriage or to introduce them to Christ or to heal a relationship that had been broken.
I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn’t make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn’t make a phone call. So for six years I didn’t make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
I never wanted to write. I just wrote letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure my parents that I was still alive and well fed and having a great time. They thought these letters were brilliant and sent them to a newspaper. So I became a writer by accident.
I don’t write polite letters. I don’t like to plea-bargain. I like to fight.
When we did Dynasty, it was the clothes. I think the clothes affected every woman around the world. I got so many letters, I think we made the designer a millionaire!
I went to state in track, won the girls’ city championship, and did well in volleyball. I was a varsity cheerleader. So you know, shoot, I’ve got a couple of letters and things! Last I counted, I think there were eight in my mama’s house.
I’ve read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy – the novels and letters – and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.
We get letters every day from people wanting more mountains. As many as I paint, they still say, ‘Give me more mountains.’
Everyone must know by now that the aim of Scrabble is to gain the moral high ground, the loser being the first player to slam the board shut and upset all the letters over the floor.
When I have a lot of emotion going on, I’ll write. I write letters to my family, my boyfriend, anyone I’m trying to get my point across to. It’s easier for me to express myself.
To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.
I don’t take part in texting and those other things myself, so I don’t really know if people put as much thought into messaging as they used to into writing letters.
We found letters at the house we bought from a sailor to his wife who lived in the house. He went down to the Caribbean on this trader vessel, bringing down salted fish. There would be handwritten letters, but also telegrams, saying which ports he was in. And he’d be gone for three months. That was just the way it is.
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!
I grew up listening in awe to stories of their wartime adventures. My granny, Joan, was a journalist and wrote amazing letters to my grandpa when he was a prisoner of war, while my nana, Mary, was a Land Girl, then a Wren. They were so independent, resilient and glamorous.
We were very kindly received by the English merchants to whom my companion had letters, and we set ourselves to learn what was the real state of things in Mexico.
I’m the absolute worst at getting jobs, ever. I had 100 rejections before I landed one. I kept all the letters in a folder until I realized I could just chuck them away.
I was writing for myself, not to be published. I was writing diaries, even letters, to myself or to anyone I was angry at. Sometimes they weren’t to a person, they were just to the universe – a bit like penning daydreams or isolated thoughts.
Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very bright.
But my father was also the one who told me I needed to clean up my mouth or I’d never find a man. What’s very important to him is manners. Show up on time. Always send thank-you letters. He is one of the more thoughtful humans I’ve ever met. He’s a great man and a very good dad.
Since 2001, people have been scared. There’s been some really scary stuff that’s been happening – 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, anthrax letters, D.C. sniper, global warming, global financial meltdown, bird flu, swine flu, SARS. I think people really feel like the system’s breaking down.
I lived in Calcutta for five months in 1999. While I was there, I read many journals, diaries, collections of letters and histories.
What I tend to get from America is very enthusiastic letters and e-mail from librarians and schoolteachers, the gatekeepers, though I hesitate to use that word. I’ve never been a huge seller.
Letters are something from you. It’s a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.
When an actor has money he doesn’t send letters, he sends telegrams.
I used to write letters to Jim McKay in college. ‘Wide World of Sports’ was this travelogue, really, that introduced us to sports and it introduced us to parts of the world that we had never seen before. And no one was a bigger tour guide than Mr. McKay.
Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It’s enough to make you lose your mind day by day.
Fans used to write love letters to me, but I havent had any marriage proposals.
I get racist letters all the time from people who aren’t Bradford City supporters. You just laugh at them, tear them up and throw them in the bin.
Five letters here just for everybody out there in Packer-land: R-E-L-A-X, Relax. We’re going to be OK.
Every week I get letters from people worldwide who feel that the possibilian point of view represents their understanding better than either religion or neo-atheism.
It’s very hard for politicians to ignore even just a handful of letters about the same issue.
Many people send me letters in England saying, ‘I want to be a war photographer,’ and I say, go out into the community that you live in. There’s wars going on out there; you don’t have to go halfway around the world on an airplane where there are bombs and shells. There are social wars that are worthwhile.
I started on computers with ‘Billy Bathgate,’ a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it actually slowed me up for a while because it’s so easy to revise, I tended to stay on the same page. I’ve learned to discipline myself.
My fans’ love and support keep me going. I’ve a cupboard which comprises letters, cards, and gifts sent by my fans. They encourage me whenever I feel low.
The letters, the food – I had no idea I wouldn’t see a shrimp for three years. You don’t look at those little things you take for granted so easy, until you get sat down, get locked up, or get into a position were you see other people who are less fortunate than you – that don’t have anybody.
After reviewing the polygraph charts in private, the polygraph examiner told me that I had passed and that he believed I had nothing to do with the anthrax letters.
I don’t know why Sinclair Lewis fell in love with me. He didn’t get even the slightest response from me. But his letters were lovely. And the poems he wrote me were lovely. I used some of them in my book.
I have a file of letters and bits of ephemera from friends who have died. I have had lots of friends who died of AIDS.
I do send messages to my family; I send letters in the mail, and when I’m in town, I almost always leave something in the door of my house in Topeka.
One of the things that’s pretty unique about nu shu, when you look especially at these old letters and stories that have been saved, is that there are certain lines that are very standard that are used again and again. It’s almost like a formula in a sense, so that these certain lines come up again and again.
I get letters from little girls begging me to adopt them.
In Degas’s compositions with several dancers, their steps, postures and gestures often resemble the almost geometric, formal letters of an alphabet, whereas their bodies and heads are recalcitrant, sinuous and individual.
I got hate letters from girls all over America because I wouldn’t go to the prom with them.
Christopher Hitchens and I were not friends or even acquaintances. We never met or spoke on the phone, just exchanged occasional brief letters – notes, really – hand-written and snail-mailed at first, e-mailed later.
Ladies and gentlemen, on the occasion of my election I received many letters from people representing all segments of the population and all professions, especially from the younger generation, linking my inauguration with great – far too great – expectations.
I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I’m making a film. I’m chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people.
