12/10/07

I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh

12/07/07

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. -Joan Didion

12/06/07

The process of writing (composing) is democratic in its demand for hard work, regardless of the writer's ability. -Jane Mikoni

12/05/07

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. -E.L. Doctorow

12/04/07

Don't get it right, just get it written. -James Thurber

12/03/07

Whether I fail or succeed shall be no one's doing but my own. I am the force. I can clear any obstacle before me, or I can be lost in the maze. My choice. My responsibility. Win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny. -Elaine Maxwell

11/30/07

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals. -Don Delillo

11/29/07

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

11/28/07

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself. -Ursula K. Le Guin

11/23/07

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts. -Bill Vaughan

11/20/07

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself. -Michel De Montaigne

11/19/07

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. -Robert Davies

11/16/07

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. -Mahatma Gandhi

11/14/08

I picked up a pencil and held it over a sheet of white paper, but my feelings stood in the way of my words. Well, I would wait, day and night, until I knew what to say. Humbly now, with no vaulting dream of achieving a vast unity, I wanted to try to build a bridge of words between me and that world outside, that world which was so distant and elusive that it seemed unreal. -Richard Wright

11/13/07

Never grow a wishbone where your backbone should be. -Clementine Padfor

11/09/07

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, will say: We did it ourselves. -Lao Tzu

11/08/07

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue. -Xenocrates

11/07/07

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from. -Al Franken

11/06/07

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. -Zhuangzi

11/05/07

I believe talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. Electricity will do all that. It makes no judgment. I think talent is like that. I believe every person is born with talent. -Maya Angelou

11/02/07

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. -Yogi Berra

11/01/07

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. -John F. Kennedy

10/31/07

Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you. -Virgil

10/30/07

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea. -Ernest Hemingway

10/29/07

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. -A.A. Milne

10/26/07

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. -Ursula K. Le Guin

10/25/07

Truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by persuading. - Quintus Septimius Tertullianus

10/24/07

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. -Leonard Cohen

10/23/07

Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. -W. E. B. Du Bois

10/22/07

Words ... are innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, defining that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos... They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead. -Tom Stoppard

10/19/07

You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise, then in you go. -Nikos Kazantzakis

10/18/07

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. -Anton Chekhov

10/15/07

Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force. -Irving Berlin

10/10/07

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. -William Wordsworth

10/09/07

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. -Orson Scott Card

10/04/07

Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish. -John Jakes

10/02/07

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? -Friedrich Nietzsche

09/27/07

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd. -Jalaluddin Rumi

09/24/07

Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points. -Knute Rockne

09/21/07

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words. -Stéphane Mallarmé

09/18/07

Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration. -Sigmund Freud

09/17/07

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men. -George Eliot

09/13/07

To use bitter words, when kind words are at hand is like picking unripe fruit when the ripe fruit is there. -Thiruvalluvar

09/12/07

Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. -Jesse Lee Bennett

09/11/07

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master. -Hunter S. Thompson

09/07/07

The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more. -Ed Parker

09/06/07

Writing well means never having to say, "I guess you had to be there." -Jef Mallett

09/05/07

The poet is a madman lost in adventure. -Paul Verlaine

09/04/07

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human. -Richard Wright

08/31/07

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? -Kurt Vonnegut

08/30/07

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

08/29/07

Manners are like the zero in arithmetic; they may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal to the value of everything else. -Freya Stark

08/28/07

Begin with praise and honest appreciation. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders...Make the fault easy to correct. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest. -Dale Carnegie

08/27/07

Read like a wolf eats. -Gary Paulsen

08/24/07

The writer must be able to revel and roll in the abundance of words; he must know not only the direct but also the secret power of a word. There are overtones and undertones to a word, and lateral echoes, too. -Knut Hamsun

08/22/07

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. -Logan Pearsall Smith

08/21/07

One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire help to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act. -Hannah More

08/20/07

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -Milton Berle

08/17/07

Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing. We explore, we discover and we share. And the great thing about being a teacher is you get to do that with students, and the great thing about being an astronaut is you get to do it in space, and those are absolutely wonderful jobs. -Barbara Morgan

08/16/07

Courage is saying, "Maybe what I'm doing isn't working; maybe I should try something else." -Anna Lappe

08/14/07

What is powerful is when what you say is just the tip of the iceberg of what you know. -Jim Rohn

08/10/07

A word is not a crystal,transparent and unchanging; it is the skin of living thought and changes from day to day as does the air around us. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

08/09/07

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. -John Wooden

08/06/07

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the “still small voice” within me. -Mahatma Gandhi

08/03/07

God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest. -Swedish proverb

07/26/07

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. -Booker T. Washington

07/24/07

As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them -- "ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is. -Chaim Potok

07/16/07

Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, no[r] is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure. -Michael Oakeshott

07/13/07

The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers. -Jostein Gaarder

07/12/07

You do not lead by hitting people over the head--that's assault, not leadership. -Dwight D. Eisenhower

07/11/07

One of the annoying things about believing in free choice and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license. -P.J. O'Rourke

07/10/07

The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark. -Barbara Hall

07/09/07

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. -Edgar Allan Poe

07/06/07

Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings. -W.H. Auden

07/05/07

Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind, you have failed. -Jan de Hartog

07/04/07

Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well. -Peter Ustinov