Sports journalist Walter Wellesley ‘Red’ Smith was asked if turning out a daily column wasn’t a chore. “Why no” dead-panned Red, “you simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Smith_(sportswriter)
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt and humiliation.
Steven Pressfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pressfield
If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you, but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
Don Marquis
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Don+Maquis&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go&ns0=1
When you blame others, you give up your power for growth and change.
Dr Robert Anthony
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.
Johnny Cash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash
A closed mind is like a closed book: just a block of wood.
Chinese Proverb
When you go fishing you bait the hook, not with what you like, but with what the fish likes.
Anonymous
Look, you might as well know, this thing
is going to take endless repair: rubber bands,
crazy glue, tapioca, the square of the hypotenuse.
Nineteenth century novels. Heartstrings, sunrise:
all of these are useful. Also, feathers.
To keep it humming, sometimes you have to stand
on an incline, where everything looks possible;
on the line, you drew yourself. Or in
the grocery line, making faces at a toddler
secretly, over his mother’s shoulder.
You might have to pop the clutch and run
past all the evidence. Past everyone who is
laughing or praying for you. Definitely you don’t
want to go directly to jail, but still, here you go,
passing time, passing strange. Don’t pass this up.
In the worst of times, you will have to pass it off.
Park it and fly by the seat of your pants. With nothing
in the bank, you’ll still want to take the express.
Tiptoe past the dogs of the apocalypse that are sleeping
in the shade of your future. Pay at the window.
Pass your hope like a bad check.
You might still have just enough time. To make a deposit.
Barbara Kingsolver
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kingsolver
(“Hope; An Owner’s Manual,” taken from “How to be Hopeful,” Kingsolver’s commencement address at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, May 11, 2008.)
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Zinsser
