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All Entries from the Quotes Category

Frances Mayes on ColleteSeptember 06, 2010

One of this life’s greatest pleasures: a writer’s books can intersect with your life and lead you to the next largest space you can occupy.
Frances Mayes, writing of Collete in Ä Year in the World.

Steve Jobs and True-SelfAugust 08, 2010

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Steve Jobs

Intuition and FeelingJuly 26, 2010

The implicit memory in the human brain, intuition, is the result of millions of unconscious experiences that are carefully wired into your feeling brain to provide you with a wealth of information. But to access intuition, we must feel.
Laurel Mellin

Art and Fear ... and a little bit of Belgium.June 25, 2010

Control, apparently, is not the answer.  People who need certainty in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive or spontaneous.  What’s really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way.  Simply put, making art is chancy - it doesn’t mix well with predictability.  Uncertainty is the essential,…

The Truly Creative Mind ...  a quote from Pearl S BuckMay 31, 2010

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books…

A Quote, Martha GrahamMay 30, 2010

You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. It is not your business to determine how good it is, how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. But it is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly to the urges that motivate you.  There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, the expression…

Nietzsche, Chaos and the dancing starMay 30, 2010

I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.
- Nietzsche

Another quote that gives me hope regarding my way of being ...

Travel ... perhapsApril 27, 2010

That is why we need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to…

Scott Belsky, Founder and CEO of Behance writes 5 Tips for Making it HappenApril 22, 2010

Creative types have a problem. We have so many great ideas, but most of them never see the light of day. Why do most ideas never happen?  The reason is that our own creative habits get in the way. For example, our tendency to generate new ideas often gets in the way of executing the ones we have. As a result, we abandon many projects halfway through. Whether a personal website, a new business idea or a long-dreamt novel, most…

Best Business Advice, Danielle LaPorte.April 19, 2010

Only do it if it’s fun. If it’s not fun, make it fun. If you can’t make it fun, don’t do it.
Peter Russell, physicist/philosopher

Extract from Best Business Advice I’ve Ever Received.
Danielle LaPorte

Photography as Passion.March 19, 2010

There is only the frame.  That is our craft.  Painting with light, in slivers of time, within the frame of our image.
David duChemin.

I’m reading a new photographic hero of mine ... David duChemin. 

His book, Within the Frame - the journey of photographic vision, is devourable in a mind-bending, exciting way.

He is reminding me of why I take photographs.  It can’t…

Eve Ensler, Girls, ignore adults who wish you to be less than you areMarch 17, 2010

I grew up with the words, ‘Diane, a little bit of you goes a long way’ ... and so it was that I tried to live more quietly, more thoughtfully, and tried so very hard not to be that ‘too much’ kind of girl.

Today, Sas pointed the way to a brilliant article in The Guardian.  Her words delighted me ... if only we had all been told this…

How to be Miserable as an Artist, Keri SmithMarch 16, 2010

I desaturated an image I took of some broken glass and then wrote these words over top of it ... so true that we surely needed reminded periodically.

The words come from Keri Smith and keep circulating.

On writing, a quote by Annie DilliardMarch 13, 2010

There is a truly fascinating personal article, titled Annie Dillard and the Writing Life by novelist Alexander Chee.  The introduction reads, Writers aren’t born, they’re made—from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine. And sometimes tutelage.  Novelist Alexander Chee recounts studying with Annie Dillard, learning lessons from a master.

I loved this extract:
You are the only one of you, she said of it. Your unique perspective, at this time, in…

So Much Love ... IVMarch 10, 2010

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression… . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographer

Success ...March 06, 2010

I could not wait for success, so I went ahead without it.
Jonathan Winters

I loved this.

Depression’s Upside - The NY Times, by Jonah LehrerMarch 01, 2010

Why is mental illness so closely associated with creativity? Andreasen argues that depression is intertwined with a “cognitive style” that makes people more likely to produce successful works of art. In the creative process, Andreasen says, “one of the most important qualities is persistence.” Based on the Iowa sample, Andreasen found that “successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.” While Andreasen acknowledges the burden of mental…

The Dalai Lama, a quoteFebruary 19, 2010

Everyday, think as you wake up, ‘today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am…

Frantz FanonFebruary 17, 2010

No, we do not want to catch up with anyone.  What we want to do is to go forward all the time, night and day, in the company of Man, in the company of all men.  The caravan should not be stretched out, for in that case each line will hardly see those who precede it; and men who no longer recognise each other meet less and less together, and talk to each other less and less ...
Vincent Van Gogh on What Artists Lack ...February 15, 2010

Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim.
That’s just what artists lack!
Vincent Van Gogh

Timely, I thought as I read this in Leslie Avon Miller’s newsletter. 
Today, a whole day before reading her words, I tried singing a little with some people I admire out in the world and I was stunned and delighted…

The dignity of speaking the truth ...February 15, 2010

You can’t go deep into your writing and then step out of it, clamp down, go home, “be nice”, and not speak the truth. If you give yourself over to honesty in your practise, it will permeate your life. You can’t straighten up during writing and then hunch back down when you let go of the pen. Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth, and it spreads out from the page into all of our life, and…

The WriterFebruary 04, 2010

And doesn’t a writer do the same thing? Isn’t he knitting together scraps of dreams? He hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself; he builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back and hopes that whoever might come to see it will believe.
Anthony…

Tahir Shah, In Arabian NightsJanuary 15, 2010

‘Stories touch us even before we enter this world,’ she said, ‘and they continue until we go to the next world.  They are in the dreams of an unborn baby, in the kindergarten and school, in news reports and movies, in novels, in conversations and nightmares.  We tell each other stories all our waking hours, and when our mouths are silent we are telling stories to ourselves in the secrecy of our minds.  We can’t help but tell stories, because…

A Little Bit about New Zealand ... with an updateJanuary 09, 2010

“New Zealanders who go to Australia raise the IQ of both countries.”
Robert Muldoon, Former-Prime Minister of New Zealand.

I found this website with some small facts about New Zealand on it ... the above comment amusing me because my lovely brothers both live permanently in Australia.

Note:  “Robert Muldoon, who made this superbly cutting comment, did not provide any numbers to back it up. Unfortunately, therefore, we cannot claim it as…

A Quote about Writing, Betsy LernerJanuary 07, 2010

Most writers, like most children, need to tell. The only problem is that much of what they need to tell will provoke the ire of parent-critics, who are determined to tell writer-children what they can and cannot say.  Unless you have sufficient ego and feel entitled to tell your story, you will be stymied in your effort to create. You think you can’t write, but the truth is you can’t tell. Writing is nothing if not breaking the silence.
…

Gwen Bell, on tea ...December 17, 2009

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.
C.S. Lewis

I know a few people who will enjoy this post by the famous Gwen Bell, on tea.
Those same people will probably love the quote she posted there at the start ...

Enjoy!

On Growing ...December 17, 2009

Our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable.
Twyla Tharp

Lifted from Christine Mason Miller’s lovely site.

Advice from Johann Wolfgang von GoetheDecember 13, 2009

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Salman Rushdie, a quoteDecember 08, 2009

For a long while I have believed, this is perhaps my version of Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsidedness, that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race, that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers perhaps, that…

Yiannis Ritsos, PoetNovember 22, 2009

I know that each one of us travels to love alone,
alone to faith and to death.
I know it. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t help.
Let me come with you.
Yiannis Ritsos, an extract from Moonlight Sonata

Quoted in Frances Mayes, A Year in the World.
I cannot tell you how much I am enjoying this book of hers.  Reading her…

Fernando Pessoa, a quoteNovember 18, 2009

I’m writing on a Sunday, the morning far advanced, on a day full of soft light in which, above the rooftops of the interupted city, the blue of the always brand-new sky closes the mysterious existence of stars into oblivion.
In me it is also Sunday . . .
My heart is also going to a church, located it doesn’t know where.  It wears a child’s velvet suit, and its face, made rosy by first impressions, smiles without…

The Return ...November 13, 2009

Travel releases spontaneity.  You become a godlike creature full of choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower, read a history of Byzantium, stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna dei fusi.  You open, as in childhood, and - for a time - receive this world.  There’s a visceral aspect, too - the huntress who is free.  Free to go, free to return home bringing memories…

Veronica McCabe Deschambault - OpenOctober 21, 2009

It takes courage to be open to life, open to people, open to love, open to change. Doing so leaves us open to criticism, open to judgment, open to pain. However, I believe writers and artists have no choice but to embrace openness. It feeds our spirits and inspires our work and tutors us in the universal language of our shared humanity.
Veronica McCabe Deschambault

Nina Witty, LifeOctober 03, 2009

Who can resist a quote like this ... ?

Not me, this woman who finds herself living this life ...

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!
Author: unknown

Source, Mother Theresa and wordsOctober 03, 2009

Words lead to deeds…they prepare the soul,
Make it ready, and move it to tenderness.
St Theresa

Pooh Bear WisdomSeptember 21, 2009

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”
“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.

Piglet was comforted by this.

Borrowed from Sue Ludwig’s post over on Christine Kane’s blog.

The Mona Lisa Cafe, IstanbulSeptember 10, 2009

 

For we sit surrounded by objects which perpetually express the oddity of our own temperaments and enforce the memories of our own experience.
Virginia Woolf

Girl on a Flying FoxSeptember 01, 2009

So perhaps we will write toward what we will become from where we are.
May Sarton.

Tiziano Terzani, Writer, Journalist, TravelerSeptember 01, 2009

“Life is what we make of it. Explore and appreciate life to the fullest as I did”, he said.  “Even in the worst moments, we have the ability to reach within ourselves and find meaning in adversity.”

And, “The only real teacher is not in a forest, or a hut or an ice cave in the Himalayas. “It is within us.”
Tiziano Terzani

Tiziano wrote one of my top 5 favourite books of all time ... Paul Salopek, JournalistSeptember 01, 2009

“It’s not acclaim, it’s not money ... [It’s] just the act of moving through the world in the way a storyteller does, where the thing you’re out there getting, what grabs you, what gets you, what grabs you in the gut, is saying, ‘Aha, there’s a story unfolding in front of me, and I can tell it.’ It’s almost a shamanistic sort of power. So that’s what rings my bell. The accolades and everything else are great. I’m delighted, I’m…

A Taste of Tuscany, Frances MayesAugust 31, 2009

Stepping inside the forno, I’m suddenly surrounded by the warm aromas of just-baked bread.  ‘Welcome back,‘a Cortona woman greets me.  Maybe I look dazed, having arrived last night from California, a twenty-hour ordeal, because she asks, ‘What do you do for jet lag?
  ‘I usually just wait it out.  I’m so happy to be here that I don’t notice it very much - just get up at four in the morning for a few days.  What do you…

Howard ThurmanAugust 27, 2009

Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman

Borrowed from the beautiful world of Christine Mason Miller

Senator Edward M. KennedyAugust 26, 2009

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.
Extract from The NY Times, written by John M. Broder.

You…

Frances MayesAugust 21, 2009

Writing requires, for me, not only the actual time when I am writing, but a span of time for dreaming, taking notes, reading, meditating in the bathtub, walking alone.

That peripheral time is just as crucial.
Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun
- interview extract from Salon Travel .

Carlotta Mismetta CapuaAugust 19, 2009

It’s all too easy to judge people and categorise them – categories kill off individuality.
Carlotta Mismetti Capua, Italian journalist.

Thus begins the story which Carlotta Mismetti Capua, an Italian journalist, shared with the world via a Facebook group in December 2008. The tale begins on the number 175 bus. No-one wanted to sit next to the children because they were dirty, foreign and, above all, different. ‘People were muttering, aha, gypsy murderers,’ Charlotte continues.…

Katherine Mansfield, At the BayAugust 16, 2009

When I was downsizing the two boat images, I titled them ‘A Katherine Mansfield Kind of Morning, New Zealand’ because she captured it best for me in her short story titled At the Bay.

An extract: The sun was rising. It was marvellous how quickly the mist thinned, sped away, dissolved from the shallow plain, rolled up from the bush and was gone as if in a hurry to escape; big twists and curls jostled and…

Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances MayesAugust 09, 2009


Back in the days when I was the wife of a New Zealand Airforce officer, living on Base Woodbourne up in Marlborough (‘up’ because I came from ‘down’ in Dunedin) I bought a book that has traveled everywhere with me ever since.

I devoured Frances Mayes Under the Tuscan Sun as we moved off base and out of that airforce life down to Fiordland, in the south west of…

Chaos and Nietzsche.August 09, 2009

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Nietzsche

I find this incredibly hopeful ...

James Nachtwey, PhotographerAugust 09, 2009

I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.
James Nachtwey, Photographer.

Further research led me to a photo agency James and six others began back in September 2001, called VII Photo Agency. If you are interested in the world and its news, if you love photography and are curious about people, then this site is worth wandering through.…

Marianne Williamson, Our Deepest FearAugust 09, 2009

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that…

The Creative License, Danny GregoryAugust 09, 2009

To be creative, you must be brave and allow yourself to take risks. You must also be a little crazy.

But have an appropriate degree of perspective. Reassure yourself that by doing a watercolour or throwing a pot you won’t set off some chain reaction that destroys your entire universe. The whole reason you are feeling any sort of need to be creative is because you, as an organism, feel some need to adapt to changes in your environment. Your…

Fatema Mernissi, writerAugust 09, 2009

Pessimism is a routine
Hope is a creation
Celebrations of the things which are mysterious

al-ya’s ‘ada
al-amal ibticar
‘ihtifa’ bi-l-ashya’ al ghamida’
Dar al Adab, Beruit 1988, p. 36

Wandering through Fatema Mernissi’s website revealed a woman substance. I enjoyed the taste of what I found here; in an extract from Fatema’s Erasmus Prize speech, 4 November 2004 - Is the Satellite…

On being a kiwi legend ...August 09, 2009

One of my favourite people in the world sent me this a long time ago.  It made me smile as I read simply because it contains a million memories of growing up in New Zealand. I wanted to make it shorter but couldn’t find anything I could cut out ... it’s all real.
Thanks Christine.

I’m talking about hide and seek/spotlight in the park. The corner dairy, hopscotch, four square, go carts, cricket in front of the rubbish bin…

Elif Shafak, WriterAugust 09, 2009

One can be multicultural, multilingual and yes, multifaith.  Writing fiction necessitates thresholds. Literature thrives upon the desire to transcend, to move far beyond our boundaries – be it in terms of national, ethnic, religious or gender identities. The ability to transform, to be as flexible and fluid as water, to step onto the thresholds…
Elif Shafak, Author

Concentration, William JamesAugust 07, 2009

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought, focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state.
William James

Thanks to Marianne over at Ryszard KapuscinskiAugust 05, 2009

“Later, these will be called legends and myths, but in the instant when they are first being related and heard, the tellers and the listeners believe in them as the holiest of truths, absolute reality,” he writes. And so “the fire burns, someone adds more wood, the flames’ renewed warmth quickens thought, awakens the imagination.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski, from a review in the NY Times

Eve Arnold, Magnum PhotographerAugust 03, 2009

If the photographer has forged a relationship which permits an atmosphere in which the subject feels relaxed and safe, there is an intimacy that allows the person being photographed to be uninhibited and to reveal unknown aspects of herself.
Eve Arnold, Magnum Photographer

The “Been-There-Done-That” Guide to Criticism, by Christine KaneAugust 02, 2009

Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine with more than 4,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at Christine Kane.com.

Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember - the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.
Zig Ziglar

Here’s one thing I’m pretty…

Immigration, Pater AndresAugust 02, 2009

“The direction is changing, but migration will always exist,” says Pater Andres, “after all, migrating in times of need is a fundamental right of free human beings.”
Der Spiegel, an extract from an article written by Klaus Brinkbäumer

Colin Monteath, Photographer, Writer, TravelerJuly 31, 2009

Chance encounters change lives. Close friends, passing aquaintances and even characters who emerge from old books often leave footprints across my heart. By opening mysterious doors, the influence of others has inadvertently altered the direction of my life.
Colin Monteath,  from Under A Sheltering Sky

Katherine Mansfield, WriterJuly 04, 2009

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.
Katherine Mansfield (one of my favourite New Zealand writers)

A Quote, from Sir Richard BurtonJune 11, 2009

After a long and toilsome march, weary of the way, [the wanderer] drops into the nearest place of rest to become the most domestic of men ... But soon the passive fit has passed away; again a paroxysm of ennui coming on by slow degrees, Viator loses appetite, he walks about his room all night, he yawns at conversations, and a book acts upon him as a narcotic. The man wants to wander, and he must do so, or he…

A Taste for Adventure, by Anik SeeMarch 11, 2009

image

I’m looking up and in the sky there is the shiny glint of a jet airplane caught in the sun’s grasp, pushing silently east; I’m thinking there are four hundred people going somewhere else. I’m hoping that most of them realise the freedom of being 38,000 feet up and headed somewhere new.

Anik See, from A Taste for Adventure

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