Goethe

Whatever you can do or dream you can begin.

Thoreau/Emerson

When Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay taxes to a government which supported slavery, Emerson went to visit him.

"Henry David," said Emerson, "what are you doing in there?"

Thoreau looked at him and replied, "Ralph Waldo, what are you doing out there?"

[quoted in Hayden 1988: 41-42]

Raymond Carver

At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing -- a sunset or an old shoe -- in absolute and simple amazement.

William Shakespeare, King Richard II

More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before,
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things lost past.

Act II, scene i

William Butler Yeats

And he called loudly to the stars to bend
From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they
Among themselves laugh on and sing alway …

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.