Favorite Quotes

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D.H. Lawrence said, "Be still when you have nothing to say; [but] when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."

Alice Sebold said, "It's very weird to succeed at 39 years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted."

Madeleine L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

Stanley Kunitz said, "Do something else, develop any other skill ... turn to any other branch of knowledge. Learn how to use your hands. Try woodworking, birdwatching, gardening, sailing, weaving, pottery, archaeology, oceanography, spelunking, animal husbandry — take your pick. Whatever activity you engage in, as a trade or hobby or field study, will tone up your body and clear your head. At the very least it will help you with your metaphors."

"Why does anybody tell a story?" Madeleine L'Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer. "It does indeed have something to do with faith, " she said, "faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."

Herbert Spencer wrote, "[F]or only by varied iteration can alien conceptions be forced on reluctant minds."

Kay Ryan said, "What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing — my major sense organ is apparently a pencil."

Emily Post said, "Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use."

Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."

Samuel Coleridge said, "Nothing is insignificant."

Marianne Moore said, "Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads."

Charles Schulz said, "Most of us are much more acquainted with losing than we are with winning. Winning is great, but it isn't funny."

Gustave Flaubert wrote, "To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."

Stendhal said, "One can acquire everything in solitude except character."

Edith Wharton said, "Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."

Galway Kinnell said, "To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment."

Anaïs Nin said, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection."