Cheers, edgar – I got a bit lost (for a couple of days) trawling through my computer looking for quotes I seem to just grab and drop anywhere, on any page of work...I need a quote about getting organized!
When I first read this quote on writing it made me laugh, but I've grown fond of it (and find it less funny) since I realised he isn't kidding !
"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."
~Charles Bukowski
Here's another that inspires me
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
~Isaac Asimov
These two I always think of together:
“Writing is a struggle against silence.” ~Carlos Fuentes
“The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.”
~Friederich Nietzsche
Those quotes make great additions to the thread. Thanks, endy.
If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist! (Paul Gauguin)
@edgarblythe,
Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.
Johnny Carson
This reminds me of the speech Steve Jobs gave at the university. It's very similar to Carson's.
BBB
@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:
“Tweet is for losers. And what I mean by that, if you wake up in the morning and you’re worried about what I’m doing, you a damn idiot. You are a damn idiot. I don’t feel the need to put every thought that comes in my head out to the world. I don’t feel that. And I hope nobody wakes up in the morning and says let me follow Charles Barkley for the day.”
Charles Barkley
"If that's all Mr. Barkandnobite thinks of Twitter (not Tweets) and how to use said social networking site then his lack of imagination is HIS fault not Twitters."
Tsartepan
The Lone Ranger: Only you, Tonto, know I'm alive. To the world, I'll buried here beside my brother and my friends... forever.
Tonto: You are alone now. Last man. You are lone ranger.
The Lone Ranger: Yes, Tonto, I am... the Lone Ranger.
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“True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.”
― Alexandre Dumas
When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
-- Willie Nelson
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
― Ernest Hemingway
One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence.
~Ogden Nash
“I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
"And now each night, I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when the stars won't come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.”
― Leroi Jones
"I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence
“No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.”
― Victor Hugo
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Oscar Wilde
This is for our Gus -
from an article by the NYTimes Frugal Traveler, Seth Kugel, on his trip in the Pantanal of Brazil:
With no dedicated guide, I had to fend for myself more at Pouso Alegre. I wandered off on my own some, though I didn’t stray far from the main road, under orders from Dona Zelia. I spotted a deer or two, and gawked at the huge jabirus in their nest above the road, but found myself drawn more often to the adorable, overgrown rodents known as capybaras. Weighing in around 100 pounds and looking like mutant-size groundhogs, capybaras’ first line of defense against humans approaching with zoom lenses is to stand perfectly still. Then they “hide” by lumbering into knee-deep water, or emit an odd bark that sounds like a pig imitating a German shepherd. I wanted to take one home.
Whole article -
http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/its-a-jungle-out-there-wildlife-in-the-pantanal/#more-9655
"Don't shoot. Don't shoot."
M. Qaddafi
"Reason … must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witnesses to answer questions which he himself has formulated."
--Immanuel Kant
"Obstinancy and heat in sticking to one's opinions is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so cock-sure, so immovable,so disdainful, so contemplative, so solemn and serious as an ass?"
Michel deMontaigne, Essays, Book III
“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”
― Albert Einstein
