Quotes – A Pondering Mind

“Writing is hard, but the more you write, and enjoy what you write, the better it gets.” ~Alice Munro

“If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.” ~Lydia Davis

“When you’re reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How doContinue reading “Reading A Novel”

Walking Meditation

“Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.” ~ Gary Snyder

“To be reborn, you have to die first.” ~ Lucien Carr

Big Cities

“The way our big cities change sucks. The beauty of cities was that they were edgy, sometimes even a little dangerous. Artists, poets, and activists could come and unify and create different kinds of scenes. Not just fashion scenes, scenes that were politically active. Big cities are getting so high-end oriented, business corporate fashion, fashionContinue reading “Big Cities”

“we’re all golden sunflowers inside.” ~ Allen Ginsberg

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” ~David Foster Wallace

Responsible Decisions

“The place of stillness that you have to go to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.” ~ Jonathan Franzen

Writing/Meaning/Thinking

“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

“Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors.” `~Siri Hustvedt

“We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves.” ~Patti Smith

Repeat

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This And That

Suppose we wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain’t this and that at all? -Jack Kerouac

The Moon

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Life

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Health will improve almost at once when worrying ends. ~Neale Donald Walsch

Money Is Numbers

Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end. Bob Marley

Man And Nature

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Don’t let one cloud obliterate the whole sky. ~Anais Nin

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Story is a metaphor for life and life is lived in time. ~Robert McKee

January

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June. ~Jean-Paul Sartre

…the strongest friends of the soul – BOOKS… ~Emily Dickinson

Source: quote garden

“Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.” ~John Green

“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.” ~Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett, Philosopher

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” ~Christopher Hitchens

Change

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. ~ Alan Watts

Don’t Worry

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Four Words

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Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation. ~Sinclair Lewis

Nothing In The World Is Permanent

“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.” ~ W. Somerset Maugham

“Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.” ~John Locke

More ….

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Hopefully ….

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December

When dark December glooms the day, And takes our autumn joys away; When short and scant the sun-beam throws, Upon the weary waste of snows… ~Walter Scott, Marmion, 1808 Source: Quote Garden

“Don’t run too fast through life. You only have one.” ~ Bo Jackson

The best place to solve a problem is on paper. ~Jim Rohn

Feelings

The Earth Has Rights, Too

“Sooner or later, we will have to recognize that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.” ~ Evo Morales, President of Bolivia

Opinions

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.” ~ John Locke

International Community Of Readers

“More and more the writer is aware of an international community of readers for whom dense language use and frequent local references are a hindrance. This seems obvious. I don’t decry it or criticize it – it’s just a fact.” ~ Tim Parks, Novelist

Expression Of An Opinion

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: ifContinue reading “Expression Of An Opinion”

“Who are we to tell anyone what they can or can’t do?” ~John Locke

“Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality.” ~John Dewey

John Dewey – Philosopher, 1859 – 1952

Children

“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.” ~ John Locke, Philosopher, 1632 – 1704

Reading Books

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ~ Anna Quindlen

Yup I Do

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The Best Experiences

“With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.” ~ Tim Parks, Novelist

Life Quote

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My Philosophy

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Great Advice

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“When you’re happy you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad you understand the lyrics.” ~Frank Ocean

Human Emotions

“Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It’s what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you’re bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.” ~ Stephen King

War

“War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.” ~ Paul Valery, Poet, 1871 – 1945

World

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, Playwright 1849 – 1924

“I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it.” ~Antonio Porchia

All Truth

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Our Stories

“Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright’s pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.” ~ Maya Angelou

The Key To Life

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”Continue reading “The Key To Life”

Greed Is A Bottomless Pit

“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” ~ Erich Fromm

“Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.” ~ Jack Kerouac

“Stories only happen to those who are able to tell them.” ~Paul Auster

The Creative Center Of A Writer’s Life

“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books— of course! ButContinue reading “The Creative Center Of A Writer’s Life”

Knowing…Not Knowing

We have to cross the boundary between knowing and not knowing many times before we achieve understanding. ~David Hawkins

The Sound Of Water

Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of water drops in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear becomes a cavity sculpted in the interior of the mind. ~Steven Holl

“Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.” ~Albert Camus

Never complain. Never Explain. ~Katharine Hepburn

The Greatest Achievement

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.” ~ James Allen, Writer, 1864 – 1912

Being An Intellectual

“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That’s what music is to me.” – Janis Joplin”

“We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.” ~ Helen Hayes

America…

“America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson

“The most beautiful curve on a woman’s body is her smile.” ~Bob Marley

A Writer’s Life

People Are Strange

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.” ~ Charles Bukowsk, Poet, 1920 – 1994

The Mind Loves The Unknown

“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.” ~ Rene Magritte, Artist, 1898 – 1967

“Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.” ~Francis Bacon

“Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.” ~ Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot, Philosopher, 1713 – 1784

Independent Thinkers

“A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.” ~ John Dewey, Philosopher, 1859 – 1952

Life Is Too Short

“I don’t care what people think about me. Never did, never will. Life is too short to be worrying about that shit.” ~ Amy Winehouse, Singer-songwriter, Born: September 14, 1983 – Died: July 23, 2011

Noble And Beautiful

“When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.” ~ John Lennon

Wake Up, America

“Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing. Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobsContinue reading “Wake Up, America”

Dreaming

“Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.” ~ Petrarch, Poet, 1304 – 1374

Helping Others

“It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.” ~ Honore de Balzac

“Singing, it’s like it’s like loving somebody, it’s a supreme emotional and physical experience.” ~ Janis Joplin

Voting

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“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” ~W. H. Auden

Morning Quote

“The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.” ~ William James

Nothing Is Absolute

“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” ~ Frida Kahlo, Painter, Born: July 6, 1907 – Died: July 13, 1954

Morning Quote

“My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don’t pretend and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.” ~ Vivien Leigh