Top 235 Desk Quotes

Traditionally, the only way I come up with cartoons is by sitting at my desk and thinking.

It all depends on which side of the desk you’re sitting on.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.

People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.

As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I’ve never heard one say, ‘No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.’ They will always say, ‘You don’t like him? I’ve got somebody else.’ They’re totally spineless.

I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn’t bring my chairs with me.

It is wonderful to say that your days behind a school desk are over. It’s just another phase in your life.

My father was a truck driver. That’s where it all started, and academically I was a disaster at school. My cousin got his name on the honour board; I, at Melbourne High School, I carved mine on the desk.

I had a fifth grade teacher who, as a very small way of trying to contain my class clown energy, gave me 10 minutes at the end of class every Friday to present whatever I wanted. A lot of the time, I did an Andy Rooney impression. I would sit at her desk, empty it, and just comment on what was in there.

Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?

For me, it’s almost a 24/7 process. It’s not like I only think when I’m in the office sitting at my desk.

I worked during summers on the foreign exchange desk as a dollar/yen broker for Noonan, Astley & Pierce. I used to write the chairman notes about how he could improve his business. And I met Bernie Cantor through this job.

I just find that people can waste a lot of time in meetings, so I try to restrict meetings to the minimum that they need to be. But I have lots of time in my day where I am available to have informal conversations, where I grab someone to talk, and people can just walk up to my desk and talk to me.

I always have Moleskine notebooks on my desk. I am a big journaler. Every day I write down where I went, who I spoke to and what it was all about. Richard Branson told me to do that.

In the studio, I don’t use an amp, I just go direct into the desk. It’s virtually acoustic, what I’m doing.

When you sit at your desk, if you’re lucky, there’s a moment when you feel empowered to be someone or something else, to leap into another skin.

The most important item on my desk is a picture of my husband and three kids making kooky faces at my niece‘s wedding. We all look silly and happy.

I love travelling full stop – so while I’ve had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you’re travelling – not when you’re chained to your desk.

We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren’t there.

You can’t run a multinational business from your desk.

At my first Olympics, I didn’t have a contract, and I wasn’t making any money. After my first Olympics, I was working at 24 Hour Fitness at the front desk. I would go to practice in the morning, run home, shower, grab some food and then go straight to work. I didn’t get off of work until 10 or 11 o’clock at night.

Dub has been a big influence in terms of production. It’s inspired so many people and so much music – in terms of music where mixing desk was the instrument. Central to that is the echo chamber, and I think there’s a little bit of a romantic thing there.

If I still had my legs, I would be in line for a battalion command, and instead, I’m flying a desk.

I just couldn’t take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that’s about all I did at school.

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that’s where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.

‘SNL‘ has changed my career because it gave it a platform to be seen. And I really feel like the Weekend Update desk is where I am given the opportunity to shine on that show.

For years, I’ve felt an obligation to harvest an animal, since all my life I’ve so mindlessly consumed them. But that was from the safety of my desk.

I used to work full time in an office, hiding away in my desk. Now, I have the opportunity to do something I love. And every day is a dream come true for me. I’m just generally grateful for all the love and support, and I will continue to give my 101 percent.

I like things on my desk that are pretty and make a statement. It’s important that whatever is on my desk inspires me because that’s where I spend a lot of my time working and creating things.

If you sit at your desk and reach and grab a cup of coffee, you don’t look directly at the cup, focus on it, and get your fingers lined up before grabbing the coffee. In real life, you reach for a cup that you see out of the corner of your eye, and when you feel it, you know you can grab it.

I used to be good at clothes shopping and whatnot – at least ,I think I was! – but at some point after two kids and a career that worked out better than I ever could have imagined, I looked up from my desk and realized that I wore the same three t-shirts and 15-year-old jeans every day.

I was nominated at first by a group called Justice Democrats. They were trying to essentially field non-corporate candidates in the 2018 midterm election. They were looking for people with a history of community service, and my name had come across their desk, and they called.

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it’s getting harder because I want to improve with every book.

Writing is a sedentary gig unless one has a treadmill desk. But I have long believed writing and working out are complementary disciplines.

My desk is more of a place where I set my stuff, and then I move around. If I’m at the office, I’m usually wandering around to different meeting rooms all day or taking people out or making tea. I’m rarely at my desk; it’s just a place to hang my hat.

I kind of slept through school. I wasn’t engaged at all. My exercise books were empty at the end of the year. But I didn’t sleep through drama, probably because there wasn’t a desk, so my teacher sent me to this audition.

When you write non-fiction, you sit down at your desk with a pile of notebooks, newspaper clippings, and books and you research and put a book together the way you would a jigsaw puzzle.

In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaining, whether ‘The Age of Innocence‘ or the latest by Colm Toibin.

I hate going out for lunch during a workday because it slows down my pace and ruins my rhythm. I prefer to eat at my desk. Actually, I wander around the design studio with a plate in my hand as I dine on, for example, salmon sashimi and a salad of tomatoes and mozzarella. I often have a bit of dark chocolate after lunch.

Cancer taught me to live only in the day I’m in. In the moment I’m in. Some moments, I simply ground myself by touching the desk, the table, the wall wherever I am and say, ‘You’re right here. Stay put in this moment.’

People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.

If you want to do a talk show on network television, you’re probably going to wind up having a desk and a band, wearing a suit, and having a sidekick. Audiences want to feel comfortable.

Before signing any contract, you have to assume that the guy on the other side of the desk is handing you a shifty piece of paper that works to his advantage. I know that sounds cynical, but it’s really that simple.

I’d just woken up from a nap, it was around 6:30 in the evening. I was eating some shrimp crackers at my desk. Then I get a call from an unknown number in Burbank, California and my heart immediately skips a beat because I know the Disney home office is in Burbank.

My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it’s because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.

Harrison Ford comes on set, and he’s very polite and says, ‘Hello‘ to everyone. He cares about everything that’s going on, on set. He cares about what’s going on with your character and what’s in the scene and what’s on the desk.

When I had a full-time job, I would write dialogue and sketch characters on my commute and during meetings. Now, I forsake showers and regular meals and stay at my desk for hours, taking breaks to drink tea and eat something sweet, usually cake.

I am a terrible mixture of being organized, controlling, but chaotic. My desk is monstrous.

My desk is right next to my bed. So I sit on my bed. I write in a big notebook which is on the desk. And if I feel drowsy, I just have to slide into bed.

We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight.

I’ve found myself at one in the morning just sitting at my desk spending an hour returning emails from the day until like two in the morning. It’s ridiculous, I should be sleeping, or dreaming, or reading a novel.

When a story is flying along, and I’m so into it that my ‘real’ world goes away, it can feel magical. I cease to be, my desk and computer ceases to be, and I am my character in his world. Psychologists call this a ‘flow state,’ and it’s better than publication, money, awards, fame.

I put the copy of ‘A Christmas Carol‘ that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the ‘Christmas Spirits.’ I plan to read it to my grandson.

We pay millions of pounds to separate Catholic and Protestant children, and even more millions on attempting to bring them together as adults. You can’t make someone fear another person if they shared a desk for seven years.

I had visited Congressman Deal before, but I never thought I’d be sitting on the other side of the desk.

When I’m writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.

I was the most reckless little kid. I only had guy friends. I had a Nintendo, and when I went to normal school, I used to tape it under my desk and then pull it out and play on it.

I’ve always voted Republican because America is exactly that, a republic. You can’t expect much leadership with a Democrat behind the desk their not even close to dual efficient.

The best part about traveling for work is that it’s better than sitting behind a desk!

I had this desk alongside the most beautiful Australian 18-year-old girl with long brown hair, and I got up enough nerve to ask her for a date.

When I’m sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it’s silence and despair! It’s not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.

Walking is a great way to exercise, and we can find ways to take additional steps each day by parking a car farther away from a destination, climbing stairs instead of taking the elevator or escalator, and walking during occasional breaks from sitting at a desk.

When I was in fifth grade, a boy put a rose on my desk and I threw it away. The attention makes me nervous.

If you don’t know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues initials on them and pass them along. When in doubt, route.

Part of making art is learning how you make it best. I’m not great at sitting down at a desk and writing for three hours. I write best verbally, talking through an idea with people, so I do my best work when I collaborate.

I am so organized that it’s dysfunctional. Everything has a place. I am a very visual person, so my environment is important to me. If my environment is messy, I can’t think clearly. I don’t like clutter. A clean desk is a clean mind for me.

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.

‘Don Quixote‘ is a very political book that has been used by diplomats, politicians, guerrilla fighters, to inspire people, to convince them that they themselves can become quixotic. George Washington had a copy of the book on his desk when signing the U.S. Constitution.

I had one guy pretend to be me, go to a hotel room, and tell the people at the front desk that it was me, and then he went in and stole all of our luggage. There’s always that eager beaver that wants to be a part of the team and comes off as a sticky fly.

Nobody just flops a complete ‘Doc Martin‘ script on the desk. They all have to be taken apart and all the apologizing taken out. Because it’s hard to have a protagonist that doesn’t really like anyone and nobody really likes him; it’s a hard premise to start from.

I didn’t really want deadlines and editorial work. I wanted something mechanical and eight hours a day. So I went to work, thinking it was easy – ha, ha – on the complaint desk at the circulation department.

I’m going to ask one question for everything that comes across my desk, which is, ‘How is this going to create jobs?’

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Like, the idea that I had to spend the rest of my life behind a desk and not be able to express myself the way I wanted to express myself. To me, that is torture. I mean if people out there that do love that then more love to them, but it just wasn’t for me.

There’s no question in my mind of the value in technology in fueling young minds. Like any other tool, if you simply throw it in the classroom and don’t consider how best to take advantage of that tool, and you try the old ways with a new piece of technology on the desk, it’s no panacea.

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.

You may think having a cluttered desk isn’t that big of a deal. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Disorganization can stunt your professional growth and decrease your productivity.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run.

It’s pointless to have a nice clean desk, because it means you’re not doing anything.

I don’t think I could ever have a desk job, so I get to be mobile. I’m on set. I get to walk around kind of doing my own thing, being independent – it’s just a really good vibe. Everyone on a film set is very happy, and they all love their jobs, so it’s a cool environment to be a part of.

David Letterman is the best late-night talk show host right now, hands down, and has been since he first took the desk.

To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don’t use a computer when I write, and I don’t use a piano. I’m at a desk writing, and it’s very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.

With tireless hours at your desk or traveling on a plane, it’s important that you take time to stay connected to your body.

I work in a room overlooking the river. I try to get to my desk as soon as I’ve fed my cats and chickens. I use a blue 3B pencil and scribble away for about 20 pages before transferring it to the computer.

Sometimes, when I’m sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing‘s coming to me, I remember my fifth-grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said, ‘This is really good.’

It’s very nice when you’re checking onto a flight and the person behind the desk suddenly upgrades your seat for you and then hands you back the boarding pass and says, ‘It’s my favorite movie.’

Writers and musicians are very similar in that the chances of making a life in either field are so infinitesimal. And once you’re in, the chances of staying viable are difficult. But there is something incredibly different about performing in front of a live audience, as opposed to sitting at your desk typing.

Do me a favor – right now, today, start a list of all your crazy obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day.

‘Show up at the desk’ is one of the first rules of writing, but for ‘Wolf Hall‘ I was about 30 years late.

Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I’m not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk.

I’m at my desk for about 9:30 A.M., and I stay there all day. Then there’s a lot of checking Facebook and eBay and that sort of thing.

The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I’d come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon.

If the world is in complete flux for me and life is falling apart, if I just manage to get myself in front of a computer or at my desk, it calms.

As a composer and as a musician I’m a true believer – and this is not to be overly diplomatic – I’m a believer that there’s artistry in everything from a lawn gnome to a desk chair to a symphony to an Andy Warhol painting. There’s art in absolutely everything.

I usually choose movies that I would want to see. I appreciate drama and if the right script came across my desk, drama you will see.

I sit down at my desk pretty early in the morning and write all day until about 4 or 5 p.m.

In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.

So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother‘s house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write.

I finished ‘Heartsick’ with my daughter asleep in her bassinet by my desk, a feat that any new mother will tell you cannot be sufficiently praised.

I went to art school… but I worked at the Museum of Modern Art. I worked in fundraising at the information membership desk. I ended up, over a period of time, doubling the amount of membership revenue that came in through people entering the museum, so people would ask me to come and work for them.

I turned 30 and decided if I was going to try acting I had better try or wind up still holding a desk job at 50.

In the scope of a happy life, a messy desk or an overstuffed coat closet is a trivial thing, yet I find – and I hear from other people that they agree – that getting rid of clutter gives a disproportionate boost to happiness.

Shibani Sharma got me a job as a translator in NDTV. Then NDTV India got launched and I worked on the desk for a while.

I’ve always loved flowers, as a little girl I’d collect flower objects and little flower books. Now I love flowers on my night table and on my desk.

Sir, I see a lot of documents in my day-to-day business, and I can’t tell you every document that I’ve seen. It may have passed across my desk. It may not have passed across my desk. I truthfully cannot answer that question, other than to say I don’t remember.

I’ve always loved flowers, as a little girl I’d collect flower objects and little flower books. Now I love flowers on my night table and on my desk.

When the Smoot-Hawley bill landed on President Herbert Hoover’s desk, more than 1,000 economists urged him to veto it. Tragically, the president ignored their pleas.

When you hear of somebody named Goldberg, you think of a guy sitting behind a desk investing your money.

Longevity, for a columnist, is a simple proposition: Once you start, you don’t stop. You do it until you die or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.

The transition of a desk job, having to be in the office at the same time every day, I found super hard.

For the cable news guest, nothing happens for a while until suddenly everything happens very quickly. After you receive your television face, you stand around for a while, ignored, until you’re sat down at a desk and asked to argue with strangers.

On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.

It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

The Standard in Hollywood, when you check in, they have that sort of Area-like vignette behind the front desk with someone sleeping behind glass. An actual person.

I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in the bedroom is that they plan to be doing things other than sleeping in the bedroom. They will have a desk in there for working, or they’ll have a big shelf in there for storing things. It should be all about relaxing.

Some people may have noticed the new computer shelf at the anchor desk. Rather than phone calls, we want to take real time e-mails, and we’ll be starting that very soon.

I grew up on film sets and I had a ball. It wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun if my dad had been working behind a desk somewhere. I remember being on the set of ‘The Godfather: Part III,’ and all the kids were running around and doing crazy things, and Francis Ford Coppola just embraced that.

At home I have a mixing desk that I like playing around on. It’s great fun making music myself. And music has always been a very good counterbalance to football for me. It allows me to switch off and relax.

This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.

You only get so much time to do something that you enjoy or love to do. If you can continue doing it, you might as well, because I don’t want to live in regret. I don’t want to be the person sitting behind a desk, wondering, ‘Did I do it right, did I finish it off, did I really give it my all?’

I would rise, monk-like, at 6 A.M., speak to no one, make tea, and go immediately to my desk from which I didn’t move until frills appeared around the edges of my eyes or I heard the sound of a wine bottle being uncorked. It would give the wrong impression to describe these as Writing Days.

My design process never starts or finishes. I am always hoping to find something through the mere act of living my daily life. I do not work from a desk and do not have an exact starting point for any collection.

I got into acting because nothing else worked. I have done literally everything. I have sold magazines door-to-door. I’ve worked on an assembly line in a factory, a restaurant, the desk at a hotel. I’ve worked in statistical typing, taught school. You name it, I tried it, and nothing worked.

I have a toy giraffe on my bed. I’ve got photographs over my desk as well as a mask of a giraffe in my kitchen. I am totally hooked.

My ambition is to sit behind a desk and work.

For the cable news guest, nothing happens for a while until suddenly everything happens very quickly. After you receive your television face, you stand around for a while, ignored, until you’re sat down at a desk and asked to argue with strangers.

I don’t like to leave anything unfinished on my desk before I travel.

I really just like to be at a desk.

We are able to use technology to make it clear that someone’s car is available or a room in a home is accessible; that there is an available desk in an office someplace.

Helping set the day’s agenda and deciding what we used and editing it, that was a journalistic high point. I liked reporting as well. Just doing the news – the live performance – wasn’t important. Working on the desk was.

When I first starting writing, and no one was paying me, in order to feel like I had a real job, I would get out of bed, put on a jacket and tie every morning, and sit down at my desk.

I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, ‘What should I do now?’ It doesn’t work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant.

I always have to go out to work even if it’s just a desk somewhere or an office or the British Library.

In one sense, I wanted to study philosophy and theology, getting into the history of the Bible. I went through that for, like, two years while I took a desk job at Warners. It was very depressing but exhilarating at the same time.

One sits the whole day at the desk and appetite is standing next to me. ‘Away with you’, I say. But Comrade Appetite does not budge from the spot.

A very important part of my workday are the two Nunzillas on my windowsill. They keep me constant company. They’re little windup toys, and when they move across the desk, they spark from the mouth. I think of them as my editors. They sort of remind you that the world can be a silly place.

Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that?

I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

There’s always been in my life that tension between living and writing. For me, because I’m so physically exuberant, it was extra hard to sit still at the desk and put in the hours that you need to put in to write.

My desk is an antique with bookshelves built into the side. I’ve turned the drawer over to hold a keyboard. We live in a 100-year-old house, and I work in an apartment above the carriage house.

I have a very strict regimen of showing up at my desk at a certain hour with my cup of green tea. It is very quiet. I don’t like having a lot of atmosphere around.

My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called ‘The Southern Planter.’ He didn’t think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I’d seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.

Almost everything I’ve ever recorded, I recorded myself at the desk, in my house.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.

I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.

I write at home. I like to be able to take a nap, watch TV, make a sandwich, and if I wake up and don’t feel like working, I’m not going to bang my head on my desk all day: I’ll go out and do something else.

Doing field trips rather than simply researching online allows me to experience the story from the point of view of my main character; you can’t get that by sitting at a desk.

Though the male can be noble in reason and infinite in faculties, he is also easily amused by shiny toys, especially ones that do dumb things on his desk.

I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they’re doing. People don’t look at me. They don’t even know I’m there.

But I didn’t really enjoy my secondary education that much, probably because I am a very physical person and don’t enjoy sitting at a desk all day. I just dragged myself through GCSE and A Levels, so it suited me very much to go on to drama school, which was very active.

Walking is a great way to exercise, and we can find ways to take additional steps each day by parking a car farther away from a destination, climbing stairs instead of taking the elevator or escalator, and walking during occasional breaks from sitting at a desk.

Your core holds you upright; it helps you bend and twist and jump; it helps you transfer power through your body; and it strengthens your posture, whether you are batting, sitting at a desk or running around a park.

Happiness is a very small desk and a very big wastebasket.

I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.

There is a great deal of busywork to a writer’s life, as to a professor‘s life, a great deal of work that matters only in that, if you don’t do it, your desk becomes very full of papers. So, there is a lot of letter answering and a certain amount of speaking, though I try to keep that at a minimum.

I’ve never sent an email in my life. My kids laugh. I often hand the phone to them and say, ‘Can you text this message to somebody.’ I don’t even have a computer on my desk.

The Oscar sits on some shelf above my desk. If there was an earthquake, I could actually be killed by my own Academy Award.

I write while my son is at school. At about 7:45 A.M., I walk him there, with the dogs, then walk them for another forty minutes or so, go home and chain myself to the desk a little before 9 A.M., and try not to be distracted until I hear my son plunge through the front door at about 3 P.M.

My family always encouraged my drawing ability. Kids in school who teased me about my reading would get out of their seats and stand behind my desk as I worked and go, ‘Wow, you can really draw.’ Later, I earned a degree in Fine Art and got a Ph.D. in Art History.

Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of Luigi and Mario has been running on my monitor. We’ve been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system.

I didn’t want to be behind a desk. I didn’t want to do a normal job. I had made my mind up. I became despondent prematurely. I had my mid-life crisis when I was 16. I suppose I’d agree with that. But acting has helped me develop a lot in my private life.

When I’m writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.

I have this nook at Milk Bar that’s my office, and my desk was just full of every box of Kellogg’s cereal, and at different times during the day, I would open up a box, eat a bowl of cereal, and I live in a world of Post-it notes, so I would leave tasting notes on all the cereal.

We’re not militant, but there are certain things that are absolutely secret. There was a pilot printed on red paper, and I read everything on my iPad and have a scanner on my desk for these purposes. I scanned in the script, and red paper script scans in perfectly fine.

I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright.

I wake up with the story in my head, so I really like to be at my desk about five minutes after I wake up. So I don’t get dressed. I put on a bathrobe, I make tea and sit at my desk.

I’m quite an untidy person in a lot of ways. But order makes me happy. I have to have a clear desk and a tidy desktop, with as few visual distractions as possible. I don’t mind sound distractions, but visual ones freak me out.

There’s nothing romantic about my work… I don’t believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.

I hate going out for lunch during a workday because it slows down my pace and ruins my rhythm. I prefer to eat at my desk. Actually, I wander around the design studio with a plate in my hand as I dine on, for example, salmon sashimi and a salad of tomatoes and mozzarella. I often have a bit of dark chocolate after lunch.

Over my desk hangs a poster from The Railway Children that my husband had framed for me. It is so lovely to see the children smiling as they run down the railway track.

My favourite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk.

You gotta know that you’re better than anybody, ’cause to me, if you don’t go in like that, you’re gonna lose! They’re gonna punk you out! On any stage, court, business venture, on the anchor desk – whatever. You’ve got to go in believing, ‘I can do this better than anybody.’

In the past, I was free to write in quiet and in the space wherever my desk was at. I could leave my instruments out. In the past, my writing was super private; I never liked showing my work at its earliest stages.

A good leader doesn’t get stuck behind a desk.

You’ve probably never thought about it before unless you happen to write for a living, but professional writers are doomed to spend most of their waking hours sitting by themselves at a desk, staring at a blank computer screen and waiting for lightning to strike.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

I was chastised for writing several obituaries for Malcolm X, exploring different aspects of his writing. One teacher in particular told me, didn’t I think I was beating a dead horse? and dismissively threw my paper on my desk.

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that’s where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.

There’s one great script that hit my desk that I didn’t change at all, and that was True Romance.

A lot of times I make people better by getting stupid, distracting, bureaucratic stuff off their desk. That’s an incredibly easy way to make a senior person more productive.

There’s nothing romantic about my work… I don’t believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.

In every single one of my purses, even my little satin clutch and my tiny Chanel bag, I always carry a lint roller. I keep them in every drawer, in every desk and nightstand. I just buy those at the dollar store in bulk.

I phoned the KKK Grand Wizard David Duke in Louisiana and asked why my membership was being delayed. He said my application was on his desk and promised to deal with it personally. It was the first of many conversations with David Duke. We talked about his family, the weather, and about his political ambitions.

My suspicion is that a lot of these office buildings will start to evolve from being optimized for individual offices or cube space to being hot offices where you decide which day you’re going to come in and then you reserve a desk.

I hope people know that when I’m sitting there, it’s not some guy on a desk on a platform with sort of this voice-of-God approach.

I doubted that there were Communists hiding behind every corporation desk and director‘s chair.

I enjoy what I do every minute of the day, even when the going gets tough. When I first began writing, I used to work at a desk in the bedroom, of a small development house. My three sons all under the age of 3 would come running in and out of the room every minute.

Depending on what I’m working on, I come to the writing desk with entirely different mindsets. When I change form one to the other, it’s as if another writer is on the scene.

I didn’t have a desk to write ‘Red Queen‘ on, so I got a nice writing desk.

Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.

I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk.

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

If your desk isn’t cluttered, you probably aren’t doing your job.

When the plane is delayed, it’s not the fault of the girl at the desk. I’m resigned to the fact that everything is out of my control and that air travel nowadays is barbaric.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

My first job was being a page at ‘The Tonight Show.’ I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he’d done the night before. I thought, ‘I can do that!’ I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.

Insights don’t usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I’m on the move. Or half-asleep.

I’m very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk.

There are still journalists who risk their lives in situations of conflict, versus those who sit behind a desk at ‘News of the World’ to report on whether someone is going out with somebody or not.

I interned for the Knicks for one year doing community relations, but I absolutely hated it. It was a desk job, and the team was not good at all, and I didn’t realize how much that correlated to the office. It was just gray, gloomy days.

Ireland starts for me with the end of ‘The Dead,’ which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

I find it very difficult to say no when I’m in Ireland. You do end up going around doing lots of events and things and not getting work done, and it’s not just a question of having hours at the desk.

I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that I’m having a good time. I can’t really write anywhere else.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was the globe that I now keep right beside my desk.

I came into the advertising business in 1952, at the age of sixteen, as a delivery boy for a stuffy, old-line advertising agency named Ruthruff and Ryan, which could have served as the setting for the ‘Mad Men‘ television series without moving a desk.

Sure, they were simple desk lamps with only a minimal amount of movement, but you could immediately tell that Luxo Jr. was a baby, and that the big one was his mother. In that short little film, computer animation went from a novelty to a serious tool for filmmaking.

We predicted the concept of a telephone that isn’t tied to a wall or a desk. We anticipated that everyone would have a cell phone. We joked that when you’re born you would be assigned a cell phone and if you didn’t answer you had died.

I have a hard time writing, and I usually have to put a timer at my desk and put it on for an hour. But I love to illustrate, and I can hardly stop myself.

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

At ‘The Daily Show,’ we were satirizing a news program. You put somebody in a suit, you put ’em behind a desk, and they become an authority figure.

My experience of fiction was, in the beginning, so exploratory. I wasn’t sitting down to a desk at Yaddo with a month, thinking I have to have a draft of a novel.

If I get incensed about some injustice, you can’t make me – I will not just going to sit at my desk, at my computer all the time. I – I might want to march out on that.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There’s a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I’m so easily led.

No trooper, no special forces operative wants to sit behind a desk. We joined up to kick some doors down.

My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You’ve been with me on every road I’ve taken. My scar and my protection.

Tacked above my desk are photos of artists I admire – Hopper, Sargent, Twain – and postcards from beloved bookstores where I’ve spent all my time and money – Tattered Cover, Elliot Bay, Harvard Bookstore.

I have this vision of maybe going the way of Bill Kurtis and, I think, Tom Brokaw, to a certain extent – the ability to not be tied to the desk anymore, but to do projects that are meaningful to you.

I haven‘t pursued it as a senator because I know it’s like spitting in the wind. But I still believe it’s the right thing. And if I were governor and a bill came to my desk that provided for background checks at gun shows, I would sign that.

I always laugh at these companies that have these rules saying, ‘You’re only allowed to have this or that on your desk.’ It’s no fun to work at a place like that.

The way in which you carry yourself, even when seated at a desk, matters.

I’ve always had a picture of the White House and it would always sit right in front of my desk. Whenever I was having a hard day I could look at it and remember what my goal was.

I do my thinking while I walk. It just loosens up the mind in the way that you don’t get when you are sitting at a desk.

I’ve got so many things coming across my desk right now that are nonfootball related, I can’t stand it.

I eat the same breakfast and lunch every day, both at my desk. I employ no time-saving tricks at all.

The way I see it, more people are wired with broadband from 9 to 5 during the day than watch TV at night. So therefore isn’t the real prime time 9 to 5? Playing games at your desk – that’s the new prime time, isn’t it?

I had this desk alongside the most beautiful Australian 18-year-old girl with long brown hair, and I got up enough nerve to ask her for a date.

When I need to get away from my desk, I tend to take walks or go places. I also like to bead – working with beads to make jewellery.

I hate tenure. Tenure allows teachers to put their feet up on the desk and possibly have a job forever. That’s why I got turned on to charter schools. It’s a business model. Every employee and every teacher will be monitored by performance.

I cannot see myself sitting at a desk from nine to five!