I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. DUKE ELLINGTON.
If we are invested in a writing life – as opposed to a writing career – then we are in it for the process and not the product.
Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” THE TALMUD.
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. EMMA GOLDMAN.
Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer. DR. JOSEPH MURPHY.
If we eliminate the word “writer”, if we just go back to writing as an act of listening and naming what we hear, some of the rules dissappear. There is an organic shape, a form-coming-into-form that is inherent in the thing we are observing, listening to, and trying to put on the page. It has rules of its own that it will reveal to us if we listen with attention. Shape does not need to be imposed. Shape is a part of what we are listening to. When we just let ourselves write, we get it “right”.
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. HENRY MILLER.
We tend to think of the rational as a higher order, but it is the emotional that makes our lives. One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment. MERLE SHAIN.
Writing is a way not only to metabolize life but to alchemize it as well. It is a way to transform what happens to us in our own experience. It is a way to move from passive to active. We may still be the victims of circumstance, but by our understanding those circumstances we place events within the ongoing context of our own life, that is, the life we “own”.
When we write from the inside out rather than the outside in, when we write about what most concerns us rather than about what we feel might sell, we often write so well and so persuasively that the market responds to our efforts.
We cannot control the reception of our work. We must find our dignity in the doing.
Younger artists are seedlings. Their early work resembles thicket and underbrush, even weeds. The halls of academia, with their preference for lofty intellectual theorems, do little to support the life of the forest floor.
The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you’ve already got.
Without them, our dreams may remain terra incognita. I know mine did. Using them, the light of insight is coupled with the power for expansive.
We may have spent years and considerable energy getting to the top of our profession, only to be struck by a bout of inner restlessness and the unshakable, unpalatable, and unwelcome conviction that our life no longer fits us and we must try to find a new one. Tempted to “ditch everything,” we may fantasize running off to the South of France or the north of Africa.
We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic. SUSAN JEFFERS.
Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us. MEISTER ECKHART.
To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information with. With our own eyes we see, and with our skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself. SOPHY BURNHAM.
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. PABLO PICASSO.
It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. SOMERSET MAUGHAM.