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”

“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.” ~Sylvia Plath

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

Be Grateful

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~ Marcel Proust

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

Writing One Sentence Stories

“I started writing the one-sentence stories when I was translating ‘Swann’s Way.’ There were two reasons. I had almost no time to do my own writing, but didn’t want to stop. And it was a reaction to Proust’s very long sentences.” ~ Lydia Davis

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

First Things First

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Planting Trees

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It Can Happen

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Sidewalk Art – Miami

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Coffee Quote

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Yup!

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One Person

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Take It Easy

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Time

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hmmmmmmmmmm

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Don’t ….

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Free Will

You can choose whatever you desire, but you’re not free to choose your desires. ~Arthur Schopenhauer

a really good question

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom – May 1, 2009 – May 10, 2019 Born in Glasgow, Scotland

Hello

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One of my all time favorite sayings

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Beauty

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Repeat

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Reading….

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what read ours. -John Locke

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