Dictation Quotes

It's a question of trying to take down by dictation what's already there. I'm not making something, I'm trying to hear it. ~ Alice Oswald

I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book
everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside. (from Parade Magazine interview, 5/26/13) ~ Stephen King

Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation? ~ Charlotte Bronte

The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself; but normally, dialogue writes itself. ~ Ayn Rand

He stared at it in utter disbelief while his secretary, Peters, who'd only been with him for a fortnight, muttered a silent prayer of gratitude for the break and continued scribbling as fast as he could, trying futilely to catch up with his employer's dictation.
"This," said Ian curtly, "was sent to me either by mistake or as a joke. In either case, it's in excruciatingly bad taste." A memory of Elizabeth Cameron flickered across Ian's mind-a mercenary, shallow litter flirt with a face and body that had drugged his mind. She'd been betrothed to a viscount when he'd met her. Obviously she hadn't married her viscount-no doubt she'd jilted him in favor of someone with even better prospects. The English nobility, as he well knew, married only for prestige and money, then looked elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. Evidently Elizabeth Cameron's relatives were putting her back on the marriage block. If so, they must be damned eager to unload her if they were willing to forsake a title for Ian's money…That line of conjecture seemed so unlikely that Ian dismissed it. This note was obviously a stupid prank, perpetrated, no doubt, by someone who remembered the gossip that had exploded over that weekend house party-someone who thought he'd find the note amusing.
Completely dismissing the prankster and Elizabeth Cameron from his mind, Ian glanced at his harassed secretary who was frantically scribbling away. "No reply is necessary," he said. As he spoke he flipped the message acr ~ Judith McNaught

War is an evil thing; but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse ... Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value ... To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side. ~ Thucydides

The place where [adults] pass the most time and submit to the closest control is at work. Thus, without even entering into the question of the world economy's ultimate dictation within narrow limits of everybody's productive activity, it's apparent that the source of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is _not_ the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade. ~ Bob Black

What comes easiest for me is dialogue. Sometimes when my characters are speaking to me, I have to slow them down so that I'm not simply taking dictation. ~ Richard Russo

How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many authors think nothing of saying, 'Ready, Miss Spelvin? Take dictation. Quote no comma Sir Jasper Murgatroyd comma close quotes comma said no better make it hissed Evangeline comma quote I would not marry you if you were the last person on earth period close quotes Quote well comma I'm not so the point does not arise comma close quotes replied Sir Jasper twirling his moustache cynically period And so the long day wore on period End of chapter.'
If I had to do that sort of thing I should be feeling all the time that the girl was saying to herself as she took it down, 'Well comma this beats me period How comma with homes for the feebleminded touting for custom on every side comma has a man like this succeeded in remaining at large mark of interrogation. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

[The married woman is] is a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, and serves her master's passion; [and] who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation. ~ Voltairine De Cleyre

There is basic equipment required: a headset, a Dictaphone to play the tapes that must be transcribed, and patience, a willingness to become a human conduit as the words of others enter through her ears, course through her veins, and drip out unseen through fast-moving fingertips. ~ Amy Rowland

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

As the lives of their characters develop, they end up on paths that writers could not possibly have foreseen - and hence give the impression of agency, even to their authors. William Blake wrote of his works "tho I call them Mine I know they are not Mine," and characterized his process of writing as a kind of dictation, "without Premeditation or even against my Will." Musicians sometimes speak in exactly the same way. ~ Cass R. Sunstein

Number 23 had plenty of redeeming qualities that made falling for him a justifiable accident. But our connection had nothing to do with our similarities, our differences, our aesthetic attractions, or our emotional and physical needs. When we spoke, he was truly with me. Our egos, our personas, expected social cues, the facades that everyone builds around them that are supposed to sculpt the way the world sees us, were stripped with Number 23 and I. He was immediately my best friend, familiar and safe - an epiphany that I had been spending my life alone in crowded rooms.
Our souls were naked. We initially curled into the warmth of that connection. But once we knew how real it was, we felt exposed, vulnerable, and raw. While his defense was his fearful recoil, mine was dictation. ~ Maggie Young

The way to resume is to resume.
If we knew everything ahead of time, all would be dictation not creation. ~ Gertrude Stein

I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist. ~ William Stafford

He had entered another imaginative world, one connected to the beginning of his life as a writer, to the Napoleonic world that had been a lifelong metaphor for the power of art, for the empire of his own creation He began to dictate notes for a new novel, "fragments of the book he imagines himself to be writing." As if he were now writing a novel of which his own altered consciousness was the dramatic center, he dictated a vision of himself as Napoleon and his own family as the Imperial Bonapartes....William and Alice he grasped with his regent hand, addressing his 'dear and most esteemed brother and sister.' To them, to whom he had granted countries, he now gave the responsibility of supervising the detailed plans he had created for 'the decoration of certain apartments, here of the Louvre and Tuileries, which you will find addressed in detail to artists and workment who take them in hand.' He was himself the 'imperial eagle.'

Taking down the dictation, Theodora [his secretary] felt it to be almost more than she could bear. 'It is a heart-breaking thing to do, though, there is the extraordinary fact that his mind does retain the power to frame perfectly characteristic sentences. ~ Fred Kaplan

Life is nothing more than a clean sheet of paper that most people use to write a dictation on, whereas only a select few ever use it to write their own essay. ~ Christopher Mart

Oh, Captain Aubrey,' cried she, 'I have a service to beg of you.'
Mrs Fielding had but to command, said Jack, smiling at her with great affection; he was at her orders entirely - very happy - delighted - could not be more so.
'Why then,' she said, 'you know I am a little talkative - the dear Doctor has often said so, desiring me to peep down - but alas I am not at all writative, at least not in English. English spelling! Corpo di Baccho, English spelling! Now if I give you a dictation and you write it down in good English, I can use the words when I write to my husband.'
'Very well,' said Jack, his smile fading.
It was just as he had feared: and he must have been quite mistaken about the signals.
Mr Fielding was to understand that the excellent Captain Aubrey had saved Ponto from being drowned: Ponto now doted upon Captain Aubrey and ran up to him in the street. Wicked people therefore said that Captain Aubrey was Laura's lover. Should these rumours reach Mr Fielding he was to pay no attention. On the contrary. Captain Aubrey was an honourable man, who would scorn to insult a brother-officer's wife with dishonest proposals; indeed she had such confidence in his perfect rectitude that she could visit him without even the protection of a maid. Captain Aubrey knew very well that she would not ply the oar.
'Ply the oar, ma'am?' said Jack, looking up from his paper, his pen poised.
'Is it not right? I was so proud of it.'
'Oh yes,' said Jack ~ Patrick O'Brian

She heard her father's voice as she prepared, remembering all the times she had taken dictation for him, or had overheard him instructing young botanists. 'Be wakeful and watchful,' she heard Henry say. 'Make sure you are not the only member of your party who can write or read a letter. If you need need to find water, follow a dog. If you are starving, eat insects before you waste your energy on hunting. Anything that a bird can eat, you can eat. Your biggest dangers are not snakes, lions, or cannibals; your biggest dangers are blistered feet, carelessness, and fatigue. Be certain to write your diaries and maps legibly; if you die, your notes may be of use to a future explorer. In an emergency, you can always write in blood. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven. ~ Martin Amis

I just take dictation for the voices in my head. ~ D.L. Marriott

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say. ~ C.S. Lewis

A PRAYER The supreme prayer of my heart is not to be learned, rich, famous, powerful, or "good," but simply to be radiant. I desire to radiate health, cheerfulness, calm courage and good will. I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected - ready to say "I do not know," if it be so, and to meet all men on an absolute equality - to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid. I wish others to live their lives, too - up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, interfere, dictate, give advice that is not wanted, or assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I'll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference, and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. ~ Elbert Hubbard

Although she seemed to be enjoying the party, even to the extent of being in sight of hysteria, she had evidently also reached the stage when moving to another spot had become an absolute necessity to her; not because she was in any way dissatisfied with the surroundings in which she found herself, but on account of the coercive dictation of her own nerves, not to be denied in their insistence that a change of scene must take place. ~ Anthony Powell

Many people believe that the free market, despite some admitted advantages, is a picture of disorder and chaos. Nothing is "planned," everything is haphazard. Government dictation, on the other hand, seems simple and orderly; decrees are handed down and they are obeyed. ~ Murray N. Rothbard

Does that have to go in?" Lada asked.
"What do you mean?" Wistala said, brought back to the dictation.
"The battle. Betrayals. Incompetence, even cowardice. Boats falling, mud everywhere, blood running from balconies, carrion birds poking marrow from bones, dwarves hanging from bridges, burned corpses, but worst of all, no hero whose courage and skill is put to the ultimate test."
"They asked for a history, they shall have my history. If someone else will have the battle take place on a spring-green field with pennants at the lance points and songs sung over the honored dead, let them write it thus. This history is a story of death begetting death, and should end with carrion birds, for they are the only ones who come out the better at the end. ~ E.E. Knight

The longer I live, the more necessary it seems to me to endure, to copy the whole dictation of existence to the end, for it might be that only the last sentence contains that small, perhaps inconspicuous word through which all laboriously learned and not understood orients itself toward glorious sense. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them. ~ Robert Rankin

The end of nonviolent 'war' is always an agreement, never dictation, much less humiliation of the opponent. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I pray that I may never meddle, interfere, dictate, give advice that is not wanted, or assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I'll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. That is to say, I desire to be Radiant
to Radiate Life! ~ Elbert Hubbard

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation. ~ Steven Pressfield

If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation. ~ Gertrude Stein

The longer i live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed into magnificent sense. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

An hour or two spent in writing from dictation, another hour or two in reading aloud, a little geography and a little history and a little physics made the day pass busily. ~ Hudson Stuck

One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command. ~ Horace Mann

In that season's finale, Milch wanted Sipowicz - who by this point had suffered the deaths of his eldest son, his partner Bobby, and his wife, and whose young son Theo was facing a medical crisis - to enter the hospital chapel and rant about all that God has taken from him. Tinker was on set. Franz was on set. The entire crew was on set. And, as usual by that point, there was no script. Milch ambled onto the set, realized everyone was waiting on him, announced that he needed someone to take dictation, and launched into a stream-of-consciousness assault on the Almighty, sounding very much like Sipowicz. Minutes later, Franz performed it word-for-word. ~ Alan Sepinwall

Writing at its best is simply taking dictation from your soul. ~ Catherine Carrigan

Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nervously and replied, "When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had said, "I don't mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say. ("Smoke Ghost") ~ Fritz Leiber

Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation. ~ Andre Breton

If I have an idea, I write it down, although I usually carry a little dictation machine with me because I'm too lazy to write. ~ Tommy Shaw

Old marketing was dictation ... new marketing is communication. Change from Convince & Convert to Converse & Convert! ~ Ted Rubin

We have Dragon [dictation software]," one primary care doctor said, "which you have to be careful of, because I just [dictated] 'Patient's prostate is bothering him' and it turned out 'Patient's prostitute is bothering him. ~ Robert Wachter

At least her nice boss was going to come out ahead, she thought. Gerald would marry Sadie and have a perfectly wonderful life while Nicky grew old taking dictation. It didn't bear thinking about.
Maybe she could do what she'd threatened Winthrop with - get married and have children. Sure. Nothing easier. First, she had to find a man. And who could measure up to old stone face? ~ Diana Palmer

I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist and I'm influenced by my readings in that tradition, such as the notion that everyone is born a perfect being and we spend most of our lives with a clouded vision trying to realize our perfection, he says. At critical moments in the book, T.S. registers his inkling of this realization. When he makes his maps, it feels like taking down dictation from the universe. ~ Reif Larsen

Along with currency manipulation, the New Deal introduced to Americans the spectacle of Fascist dictation to business, labor, and agriculture. ~ Herbert Hoover

When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates. ~ Swami Vivekananda

People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business. ~ George Gissing

If I want to be free from any other man's dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control. ~ William Graham Sumner

Suddenly a great sense of despondency comes over me. To-morrow we shall take the prepositions, I think to myself - and next week we shall have a dictation. In a year's time you will have by heart fifty questions from the Catechism; in four years you will start the larger multiplication tables. - And so you will grow up, and Time will take you in his pincers - one dumbly, another savagely, or gently or shatteringly. Each will have his own destiny and thus or thus it will overtake you. What help shall I be to you then with my conjugations and enumerations of all the rivers of Germany? Forty of you - forty different lives standing behind you and waiting. How gladly would I help you, if I could. But who can really help another here? Have I even been able to help Adolf Bethke? The bell rings. The first lesson is over. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

I have a hardcore attitude: a "self-published, ghost-written book" is wrong because the concept behind self publishing is that you have knowledge or emotions that you want to express. When
people read a book - particularly a self-published one - they have the right to expect that it's the person's writing, not cleaned-up dictation or slapping a name on a book that someone else wrote. ~ Guy Kawasaki

Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter. ~ John Dewey