Quill Quotes

The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it. (Orson Scott Card)

Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. Shallow oppressor, intruder, insister, you have found a resister.

Marianne Moore

Think of all that hard work our founding fathers put in - the revolutionizing, the three-fifths compromising, having to write the entire Constitution with a quill - and yet they neglected to include the right to vote.

Mo Rocca

I still use quill and parchment. I do e-mails, and I write, but I don't go around surfing too much.

Oscar Nunez

The word processor is a better tool than a quill pen because you can do so much more with it, but on the other hand, what you have to say and how you say it is the ultimate determination.

Walter Murch

I'm too old-fashioned to use a computer. I'm too old-fashioned to use a quill.

Christopher Plummer

Shall the painter then.... decide upon painting? Shall he be the critic and sole authority? Aggressive as is this supposition, I fear that, in the length of time, his assertion alone has established what even the gentleman of the quill accept as the canons of art, and recognize as the masterpieces of work. Seurat's painting of the Grande Jatte proved extremely influential.

James McNeill Whistler

Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don't let the pen banish you from yourself.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

Virginia Woolf

You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.

Ellen DeGeneres

There is nothing more splendid than the prospect of sitting in the morning before a new ink-stone and a sheet of white paper. The smell of the white paper is like the scent of the skin of a new lover who has just paid a surprise visit out of a rainy garden. And the black ink is like lacquered hair. And the quill? Well the quill is like the instrument of pleasure whose purpose is never in doubt but whose surprising efficiency one always -- always forgets. (Peter Greenaway)

Your lordship, only worldly light in this age of ours, you can never be pleased with another man's work for there is no man who resembles you, nor one to equal you ... It grieves me greatly that I cannot recapture my past, so as to longer be at your service. As it is, I can only offer you my future, which is short, for I am too old ... That is all I have to say. Read my heart for "the quill cannot express good will."

Michelangelo

Now I protest to thee, gentle reader, that I entirely dissent from Francisco de Ubeda in this matter, and hold it the most useful quality of my pen, that it can speedily change from grave to gay, and from description and dialogue to narrative and character. So that, if my quill display no other propertoies of its mothergoose than her mutability, truly I shall be well pleased; and I conceive that you, my worthy friend, will have no occasion for discontent. From the jargon, therefore, of the Highland gillies, I pass to the character of their Chief. It is an important examination, and therefore, like Dogberry, we must spare no wisdom.

Walter Scott

When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.

Hilary Mantel

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

Jay Dratler

While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

Margaret Atwood

Who e'er ye are, all hail! – whether the skill Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc'rous quill; With powers mechanic far above his age, Adapts the paragraph and fills the page; Measures the column, mends what e'er's amiss, Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS.

George Canning

Give me a condor's quill Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand.

Herman Melville

Oh, nature's noblest gift, my grey goose quill, Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from the parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men.

Lord Byron

To this old song: Partridge lost his quill, there's no harm won't befall him. Partridge, whose winged fancy aspired to a high estate, lost a feather in his flight and won the pen of despondency. He finds in the breeze no buoyancy for his pennants to haul him: there's no harm won't befall him. He wished to soar to a high tower but found his plumage clipped, and, observing himself plucked, pines away in despair. If he cries out for succor, stoke the fire to forestall him: there's no harm won't befall him.

Luís de Camões