The earliest known writing probably emerged in southern Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago, but for most of recorded history, reading and writing remained among the most elite human activities: the province of monarchs, priests and nobles who reserved for themselves the privilege of lasting words.
Tom ChatfieldRelated topics
early elite history human known lasting province reading words years MesopotamiaRelated quotes
We need to live life not only for ourselves. Pray quietly for everyone. Do not reject or humiliate anyone. Our thoughts and words have a powerful impact on the world around us. Pray with tears for everyone - for the sick, the weak, for the sinners. Pray for those who have no one to pray for them.
Nikolay Guryanov
While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic.
Charles Frazier
Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk's too big, the desk's too small, there's too much noise, there's too much quiet, it's too hot, it's too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all and simply to start.
Robert Harris (novelist)
The words of the Constitution are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
Felix Frankfurter