William Jay Smith Quotes

I type even faster than I talk. I'm very proud of that. I type so fast. And I have to because the characters are living in real time and I've got to keep up with them. It's a miracle they even give me a royalty.

I'm really fortunate that I type 120 words a minute.

I get verklempt if I see a vintage TI-30 or TI-54 calculator. But I don't think I'd want to use one.

Even though I'm totally dependent on modern electronic gizmos, from my laptop to my iPod to my cell phone, I love to embrace old technology or no technology at all.

The technology is just so far gone. It's just like back in the day you needed a suitcase just to have a cell phone. The battery was so heavy, it was like carrying a gallon of soda around with you all day.

I'm kind of a Luddite myself. I've got a bunch of typewriters at home. I'm a big fan of old technology.

After about fourth grade, I do remember borrowing my mother's old portable Olivetti and typing stories out on the back of photocopies of journal articles.

My mum records everything I'm in on VHS. Like, who still has VHS? I told her it's all online now, but she still tapes it.

I am a terrible, terrible typist. I could not have been a writer in the age of typewriters.

I've had someone, my assistant, type for me. I've done it that way for more than 50 years because I type with one finger, although quite rapidly.

I suspect many people have the problem that they type much more slowly than they think. Consequently, they keep resynchronizing their thought processes with what they have typed so far, and they match a later part of the thought with an earlier part that they have typed.

The machine has several virtues... One may lean back in his chair and work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around.

I'm not a computer guy. I have my Smith Corona. I would know nothing about computers.

I'm not the kind of writer that can write eight hours a day... I'm the kind of writer that the more time I have, the less efficient I am.

I've got a massive VHS collection in my apartment. Some people think that it's not a good thing, but I find comfort in it.

I was the only kids to have Sony Umatic tapes of the old 'Star Wars.' It was such an old technology; you needed two or three tapes to show one movie, so the kids used to come over to my house, and we would watch 'Star Wars.'

I kind of like to write fast. It keeps the pacing up. And it keeps me off the streets.

Olympic wrestling is like using an old Nokia phone; it's fairly basic.

I write an actual script rather quickly - a draft will take me two weeks - but I write a lot of drafts. My big thing is I don't re-read. When I write, I never re-read back. I'll send it, because if I re-read back, it will cripple me.

Don't write more than 3 hours at a time. I write three hours in the morning, 9 A.M. - 12 P.M. Other people are best late at night.

When I first started YouTube, I was using an old computer that I had had in high school that stayed with me through college that was on its last leg. The boot-up was, like, 25 minutes.

I think I'm from the 18th century, not even the 19th. I don't even use a typewriter. I prefer longhand, and that's how I submit my manuscripts to my publishers.

If your home is anything like mine, it contains several rarely explored crannies stashed full of archaic chargers, defunct cables, and freshly antiquated gizmos whose sole useful function in 2011 is to make 2005 feel like 1926, simply by looking big and dull and impossibly lumpen.

As the 19th century teetered into the 20th, the clank of typewriter keys went from solo to symphony. They were the weapon of choice for professional writers, the business elite, people with things to say and the need to say them quickly.

I love Scrivener. I've been using it since early 2007, and now I can't imagine working in anything else.