Sam Altman Quotes

You have to bring books to explain your work.

Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.

I lose things. I write things and they disappear from my desk, my life. I move a lot. I wanted to gather them and put them under one roof, under one cover, so I could document my life in a series of snapshots.

I need to write down my observations. Even the tiniest ones; they're the most important.

I have insane curiosity as to what happened in all these events. I will never know. I'm not a researcher. I don't possess that kind of mind. I have a researcher who compiles the fact sheets and chronologies that allow me to write these big books of mine.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products.

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

But, because my private lectures and domestic pupils are a great hinderance and intteruption of my studies, I wish to live entirely exempt from the former, and in great measure from the latter. ... in short, I should wish to gain my bread from my writings.

How much there is I want to do! I always feel that I haven't time to accomplish what I wish. I want to read much. I wanted to write a great deal. I want to make money.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.

I wish writing was a talent that I had. I've tried. Unfortunately, I'm just not talented in the writing department. But, if I was, I would just write complicated roles for women because there's a lack of them.

... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.

I write and film history; I don't make it.

I only wish I could write with both hands, so as not to forget one thing while I am saying another.

I learned early on that if you don't want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don't write any.

Novelists get to direct the perfect films. We get to cast every part. We dress the set exactly as we wish.

I wish to God I knew as much about writing as I did when I was 19. I was absolutely certain about most things then. Also, I suspect, more accurate.

My writing has to excite people and depict or include their experiences. That's part of my process - to go out and interact with people. It's very much like an archival process. I understand that the Brothers Grimm would go out and get people talking so they could document folk tales that weren't being documented any other way. I try to offer a little bit of myself - some experience from my life that evokes stories in other people.

I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.

When I look at what a writer owes to the reader, it's critical to know that everything you're writing about is not made up in your head. I feel that unless you can document and be certain about what it is that you're writing about, the reader is going to lose faith in your own integrity.

I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do — so much have I enjoyed it.

Our civilization depends largely on paper.

Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.