Sharpening Pencils Quotes

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

I started sharpening pencils at the census and how that was a difficult time in my life because my marriage was ending and I had quit cartooning and I didn't know what to do with myself. ~ David Rees

Once you use a toothbrush to clean a pencil sharpener, you should no longer use it to clean your teeth. ~ David Rees

I liked sharpening pencils and I was like, "Oh, I wonder if I could get paid to do it." And I figured it out and I did it. ~ David Rees

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. ~ Nora Ephron

I take pop culture really seriously, I think it's really important, and the stuff that I make ... I don't want it to be insubstantial, even if it's about something wacky, like sharpening pencils. I feel like I owe it to myself and I owe it to people who are really interested in pencils and I owe it to anybody to do my due diligence and give them something real. ~ David Rees

When I sit down at the typewriter, I write. Someone once asked me if I had a fixed routine before I start, like setting up exercises, sharpening pencils, or having a drink of orange juice. I said, "No, the only thing I do before I start writing is to make sure that I'm close enough to the typewriter to reach the keys." ~ Isaac Asimov

I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to get apes to draw these pictures, to make art pictures like the kinds of pictures in serious motherfucking paintings that you see in museums and shit. So the scientist keeps showing the apes these paintings and giving them charcoal pencils to draw with and then one day one of the apes finally draws something but it's not the art pictures that it draws. What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that's the truth, ain't it? ~ Cheryl Strayed

The small figures that appear in my paintings are there only because they were there when I was working from nature on my preliminary sketches with pencil. ~ E. J. Hughes

In order to create an image almost similar to that of a pencil case standing up and walking, I try to eliminate all excess by cutting. I have the feeling that this process (of "cutting off") is linked in some way to "elegance". Elegance and so-called "eliminating excess", or the beauty that remains after excess has beeen eliminated ... ~ Yohji Yamamoto

An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

I do not believe in guilt, moderation or dull pencils. ~ Nancy Lam

Color is gradually applied, or layered, dark to light (on a white or light-colored surface), building increasingly complex values, hues and textures. Although every colored pencil type works well with layering, harder pencils have a slight edge over the softer varieties because the points maintain their sharpness longer. ~ Gary Greene

The pencil-stroke is like cutting into the heart. ~ Gunter Brus

I have the impression that our children are much more excited about going to school than children in other countries are. They think of it as a special privilege. Going to school, being with other children, getting books and pencils - all of that is like a dream for them. ~ Cheryl Benard

Most people don't have shit ... But paper and pencils are cheap, that's why I draw. ~ Ida Lokas

Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: tomorrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.'

"Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory--you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs. Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental eye;--What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!--no sentiment!--no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall the august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let the round and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire, aerial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call it 'Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank. ~ Charlotte Bronte

My lord, I don't believe that you sincerely want to marry me as much as you want to have your way." "I want you to marry me so that I don't have my way all the time," he said, which was the truth. "It's not good for me to be indulged. And you tell me no quite frequently." She gave a huff of wry amusement. "I haven't said it to you nearly enough lately." "Then let's practice in your hotel suite. I'll try to have my way with you, and you can try to refuse me." "No." "There, you see? You're sharpening your skills already. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dime-store window. They stood there, unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there.
'Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!'
'Oh, my gosh!'
'Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!'
'Don't look. Maybe it's just a mirage. ~ Ray Bradbury

Here I am, with my book and my pencil - the latter not pointed so well as I could wish, but when Christians take leave of their senses, who is to expect that pencils will keep their points? ~ Wilkie Collins

I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things. ~ Robinson Jeffers

Try it on."
"It's probably a little snug. Marcie tends to buy down when it comes to sizing." He merely smiled.
"It has a slit up the thigh." His smile depened.
"Zip it up?"
Patch's eyes made a slow assessment of me, sharpening to vivid black. "I'm going to have a hard time sending you off with Scott in that dress. Just a heads-up, if you come home and the dress looks even slightly tampered with, I will track Scott down, and when I find him, it won't be pretty. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

She sits quietly in the passenger seat, holding Lola tightly in her arms, looking up at the starry sky and thinks about cute, big eyed, little green aliens all sitting quietly behind their desks, pencils in hand, diligently taking notes from their teacher on proper earthly etiquette.
The thought makes her smile. ~ Sean J. Quirk

I was extremely shy. And I simply didn't know how to go about it. It seemed a lot easier to write than to make films. All I needed was a pencil and a piece of paper, whereas filmmaking was something I had no access to. ~ Paul Auster

Their points sharpened like giant pencils, completely ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly. ~ Bernard Malamud

My pencil is like a fencer's foil. ~ Andrew Wyeth

But I am beginning to understand about the dignity and the art of wigs and the makeup. This small, everyday attentiveness of eyebrow pencils is perhaps a picture of the very sort of bodily care our embodied God would have us cultivate, weather in illness or wellness, whether our bodies are in the throes of ecstasy or the throes of pain. ~ Lauren F. Winner

Blue liner at the lash line is a great way to brighten the eyes. I also love using a flesh-toned eye pencil on the water line to neutralize any redness. Tipping the lashes with navy mascara is another great way to make the whites appear whiter. ~ Tim Quinn

The fracture of pencil still useful, but the fracture of soul,
we couldn't use it, Mister. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

I still remember the day I got my first calculator

Teacher: All right, children, welcome to fourth grade math. Everyone take a calculator out of the bin.
Me: What are these?
Teacher: From now on we'll be using calculators.
Me: What do these things do?
Teacher: Simple operations, like multiplication and division.
Me: You mean this device just...does them? By itself?
Teacher: Yes. You enter in the problem and press equal.
Me: You...you knew about this machine all along, didn't you? This whole time, while we were going through this...this charade with the pencils and the line paper and the stupid multiplication tables!...I'm sorry for shouting...It's just...I'm a little blown away.
Teacher: Okay, everyone, today we're going to go over some word problems.
Me: What the hell else do you have back there? A magical pen that writes book reports by itself? Some kind of automatic social studies worksheet that...that fills itself out? What the hell is going on?
Teacher: If a farmer farms five acres of land a day--
Me: So that's it, then. The past three years have been a total farce. All this time I've been thinking, "Well, this is pretty hard and frustrating but I guess these are useful skills to have." Meanwhile, there was a whole bin of these things in your desk. We could have jumped straight to graphing. Unless, of course, there's some kind of graphing calculator!
Teacher: There is. You get one in nint ~ Simon Rich

A fool is someone whose pencil wears out before its eraser does. ~ Marilyn Vos Savant

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee.
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B? ~ Spike Milligan

...that, to repeat what I heard for years and years and suspect you've been hearing over and over, yourself, something's meaning is nothing more or less than its function. Et cetera et cetera et cetera. Has she done the thing with the broom with you? No? What does she use now? No. What she did with me--I must have been eight, or twelve, who remembers--was to sit me down in the kitchen and take a straw broom and start furiously sweeping the floor, and she asked me which part of the broom was more elemental, more fundamental, in my opinion, the bristles or the handle. The bristles or the handle. And I hemmed and hawed, and she swept more and more violently, and I got nervous, and finally when I said I supposed the bristles, because you could after a fashion sweep without the handle, by just holding on to the bristles, but couldn't sweep with just the handle, she tackled me, and knocked me out of my chair, and yelled into my ear something like, 'Aha, that's because you want to sweep with the broom, isn't it? It's because of what you want the broom for, isn't it?' Et cetera. And that if what we wanted a broom for was to break windows, then the handle was clearly the fundamental essence of the broom, and she illustrated with the kitchen window, and a crowd of the domestics gathered; but that if we wanted the broom to sweep with, see for example the broken glass, sweep sweep, the bristles were the thing's essence. No? What now, then? With pencils? No matter. Meaning as fundamentaln ~ David Foster Wallace

Our greatest responsibility is not to be pencils of the past. ~ Robert A. M. Stern

A child her wayward pencil drew
On margins of her book;
Garlands of flower, dancing elves,
Bud, butterfly, and brook,
Lessons undone, and plum forgot,
Seeking with hand and heart
The teacher whom she learned to love
Before she knew t'was Art. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Already? How can this be?" I would ask, shattered by the terrible truth that I needed a three-ring binder and some #2 pencils. It's not that school was a bad thing. Summer was just so much better. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I know you are reporters and I know this is your job, but, you know, take your note pads, take your pencils down, take your grunt-o-meters down, the fashion police, put everything away and just watch the match, you know, from just the fans' perspective. I seriously think that the quality of the match today was great. ~ Maria Sharapova

What really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you. ~ Paulo Coelho

I braced my hands on my hips, examining the drop, the trees, the lake beyond. "What did I do wrong?"

Azriel, who had been sharpening Truth-Teller in his lap, flicked his hazel eyes up to me. "Aside from the tree? ~ Sarah J. Maas

I grabbed his hand and dragged him down the street to a convenience shop. I abandoned him once inside and went down the stationery aisle. I'd already known I wanted to get him some colored pencils, but now I finally had the occasion to do it. Not long after I'd picked out a big box of them, I heard Rafael call out from another part of the store, "Trojans? Like The Iliad?"
I didn't waste a second finding him and pulling him out of that aisle. ~ Rose Christo

I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted ... That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country. ~ Peter Weiss

The main courtyard was filled with warriors - mermen with fish tails from the waist down and human bodies from the waist up, except their skin was blue, which I'd never known before.Some were tending the wounded. Some were sharpening spears and swords. One passed us, swimming in a hurry. His eyes were bright green, like that stuff they put in glo-sticks, and his teeth were shark teeth. They don't show you stuff like that in The Little Mermaid. ~ Rick Riordan

My problem with mechanical pencils is that I break the lead tips constantly. ~ Mark Frauenfelder

Love The Wild Swan
I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
Hash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings.
This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your ... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan. ~ Robinson Jeffers