Quotes on Work

Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.

In art it is always as though the question is what the work of art is really about.

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.

It's work to play the same songs the same way for 70 shows.

Humanity at the centre of the primates, Homo sapiens, in humanity, is the end-product of a gradual work of creation, the successive sketches for which still surround us on every side.

I love almost everything about my work except conferences. I am too shy in front of an audience. But I love signings and having eye contact with a reader who already knows my soul.

I think we have a creative impulse where suffering can magnify our work, but so can joy. You can be in love and write the greatest love song ever. Sometimes I think too much suffering makes it difficult to do one's work.

I've been in movement work since I was 16 years old. Black Lives Matter becomes an important part of the story, but it's not the only part of the story.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he's praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she's sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

When it comes to fighting for progress in Boston, there's a long history of people in power trying to label advocacy and hard work as being political in order to avoid accountability and distract from community demands for better leadership.

Here's the problem with phones - they are a ready-made diversion from the considerably harder work of growing a business.

I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees.

Some people care about their work lasting forever - I have little interest in it.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

I love being a mother. I think it's the best thing I've ever done, and I personally feel that it's had a very positive effect on my work. I think it's an encouraging force for creativity, it feeds creativity - it did for me, certainly.

I don't know about hiding away, but I really only like to present myself when I'm working on something - it's more my work I like to present to the world rather than myself.

I don't look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I - personally, I'm not interested in my own past. I'm only interested in today - perhaps tomorrow.