Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, letter from Paris to a potential benefactor c. 1927

I want to work. This is no vain ideal that I am favoring myself with, no distraction through which I seek to make life more agreeable and time pass more quickly, but a fire that burns in me, a force which compels my obedience and I am only obeying a command which is stronger than myself, even in the face of what may seem discouraging conditions. I cannot stop, I must go on.

Someday people will realize that this is my medium of expression, that it is still possible to say something through sculpture, that a sculptor may yet live again.

I do not complain of difficulties. I am not afraid to face them, the contraire...

I must continue to work. People like my things and if they like them shall I not someday be able to take care of myself? I want to. I expect that of myself, shall respect myself more when I can, but at this moment I seem not to be able to, and I am sad, almost ashamed to ask. ...What more can I say? I want to work, I want to work. I must work. I live for that alone.

Forgive me I beg you for writing like this, for I[']m driven to desperation.

Miller Williams, The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina

Somewhere in everyone's head something points toward home,
a dashboard's floating compass, turning all the time
to keep from turning. It doesn't matter how we come
to be wherever we are, someplace where nothing goes
the way it went once, where nothing holds fast
to where it belongs, or what you've risen or fallen to.

What the bubble always points to,
whether we notice it or not, is home.
It may be true that if you move fast
everything fades away, that given time
and noise enough, every memory goes
into the blackness, and if new ones come-

small, mole-like memories that come
to live in the furry dark-they, too,
curl up and die. But Carol goes
to high school now. John works at home
what days he can to spend some time
with Sue and the kids. He drives too fast.

Ellen won't eat her breakfast.
Your sister was going to come
but didn't have the time.
Some mornings at one or two
or three I want you home
a lot, but then it goes.

It all goes.
Hold on fast
to thoughts of home
when they come.
They're going to
less with time.

Time
goes
too
fast.
Come
home.

Forgive me that. One time it wasn't fast.
A myth goes that when the years come
then you will, too. Me, I'll still be home.

Hemingway, letter to Janet Flanner 1933

The only way, I suppose, is to find out what women are going to write memoirs, and try to get them with child.

Robert Herrick, "Delight in Disorder"

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness; A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly; A winning wave (deserving note) In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility; Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.

Albert Einstein

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. 

Sean Morley Dixon, "In the Movies"

Till a man comes along from... builds a marquis up above, um... sets up a booth, sells tickets to our youth... 'Cause we're young, and we're young. But for me, though, it's much different from that No matter what I do, I will always be old...

Colette

Who said you should be happy? Do your work.

Marshall McLuhan (1972)

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.

Flaubert

Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d'être violent et original dans vos œuvres.

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from "Love Is Not All"

It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Pablo Neruda, from Sonnet XVII

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

Rainer W. Fassbinder

The more real things get, the more like myths they become.

David Mamet in Wired Magazine

Some tree hugger, and it might have been Emerson, said that if every man just acted in his own best interests, this would be paradise on Earth.

This is the sentiment of one who has never been punched in the nose.

Jonathan Wallace, "Lying"

The reason that I hate lies is because, like you, I wish to navigate carefully through life, and to do so I must be able to calculate my true position. When you lie to me, you know your position but you have given me false data which obscures mine.

Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You

Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down; but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies, frequent coffee houses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent.

Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy

One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other.

Richard Hughes

Much the best way of escaping from an embarrassing rencontre, when to walk away would be an impossible strain on the nerves, is to retire in a series of somersaults.

Bill Moyers, The Journal

BILL MOYERS: Action. I mean, don't you think? I mean, hope is actually- toxic. If you hold it long enough without some resolution.

BARRY LOPEZ: I would say yes. I would affirm that you have to have action. But I think the virtue that is, that we-- you know, there are certain things that people say you shouldn't talk about, because it makes people nervous.

The things that make us uncomfortable in public are a person who wishes to speak of what is beautiful. That makes everybody a little bit nervous, because many of us keep this jaded, cynical separateness with the world, because we're cautious. We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy.

Another thing that makes people nervous is if you speak of faith, because immediately people think, Christian faith? Or Islamic faith? Or what kind of faith are you talking about? I'm not talking about any of those. I am talking about the belief in other people. The faith-- when I have been in situations that are dangerous, physically dangerous, you know, in Antarctica or, you know, diving underneath ice down there, for example, which I did for awhile.

My faith is in my colleagues. And when I meet other writers, journalists, who've been doing this for a long time, trying to make us aware of what it is that we're living in, I put my faith in those people. And so, the word that has come alive for me in recent months is to have faith in each other.

Walt Whitman, The Swimmers

(It seems to me that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.)

Dwight Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.

Jack London

I would rather be ashes than dust.

Aaron Traister

We talk about our marriages so seriously and with such reverence; we talk about our sex or lack thereof in the same way. Maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we shouldn't treat the institution and its dirty little companion as some sort of precious Fabergé egg that is either shattered and worthless or pristine, untouchable and priceless. Maybe it's more like Silly Putty and the plastic egg it comes in. Sometimes the egg is open, allowing for hours of stretchy, flexible fun; sometimes the egg is closed and kind of boring, but as long as the Silly Putty remains inside the egg it's still full of as much potential as your imagination allows, and the value of the egg is not diminished no matter how often or vigorously the egg or its contents are fingered or played with. (And yes, I was staring at a Silly Putty egg on my dining room table when I came up with that extended metaphor.)

Wallace Shawn, The Fever

What do you think a human being is? A human being happens to be an unprotected little wriggling creature ... Without a shell or a hide or even fur, just thrown out onto the earth like an eye that's been pulled from its socket! Like a shucked oyster that's trying to crawl along the ground.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Joan Didion, "Self Respect"

It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one's head in a Food Fair bag.

Warren Buffett

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Henry King, "Exequy on his Wife"

...By thy clear sun
My love and fortune first did run;
But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphere,
Since both thy light and motion,
Like a fled star, is fall'n and gone,
And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish
The earth now interposed is....

Masahide (17th Century Japanese poet)

Barn's burnt down --
Now I can see the moon.

Barack Obama, Victory Speech

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

St. Augustine in prayer

Make me perfect ... But not yet.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Margaret Mead

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Ron Sures, Dinner Conversation

The best thing about getting older is that a man's libido is finally in sync with his emotions.

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Money ... has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Paris, April 1, 1922"

A mile of clean sand.
I will write my name here, and the trouble that is in my heart.
I will write the name & place of my birth,
What I was to be,
And what I am.
I will write my forty sins, my thousand follies,
My four unspeakable acts. . . .
I will write the names of the cities I have fled from,
The names of men & women I have wronged.
I will write the holy name of her I serve,
And how I serve her ill.
And I will sit on the beach & let the tide come in.
I will watch with peace the great calm tongue of the tide
Licking from the sand the unclean story of my heart.

Lisel Mueller, "The Blind Leading the Blind"

...
There are a thousand turnoffs. I have been here before.
Once I fell off a precipice. Once I found gold.
Once I stumbled on murder, the thin parts of a girl.
Walk on, keep walking, there are axes above us.
Watch for the occasional bits and bubbles of light ?
Birthdays for you, recognitions: yourself, another.
...

Lyndon Baines Johnson

A president's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

Bram Stoker, Dracula

Despair has its own calms.

Dakin Lecakes, "The Way"

From here to there

From near to far

From dark to light

There is a way

And I have trod

That path in dreams

And always you

Are there with me

And I am here

And you are near

And I will show

To you the way

From this to that

From first to last

From tears to joy

There is a way

Through the rain

And I have felt

The cleansing shower

Of water falls

And I am here

And you are there

And I will show

To you the way

My hand is open

Put your hand there

And let us walk

Into the rain

Together

I will take you there

Barack Obama

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

J. P. Morgan

A man has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.

G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself -- there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold."

"All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree."

Pablo Neruda, "If You Forget Me"

...
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

...
Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.

Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.

Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en ese día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.

Pero
si cada día,
cada hora
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable.
Si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.

Jacques Brel

Because everybody's tooth aches in the same way, everybody loves their mother, everybody loves or hates spinach. And those are the things that really count.

Max Ehrmann, 1927

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

Peter Wellington, "The Stoned Diaries"

Every complaint actually means -- I can't believe this is happening and I'm going to die.

Adam Phillips, "Worrying and Its Discontents"

Worrying is an ironic form of hope.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Like so many other things, people have also misunderstood the position love has in life; they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure are more blissful than work; but there is nothing happier than work, and love, precisely because it is the supreme happiness, can be nothing other than work. —So those who love must try to act as if they had a great work to accomplish: they must be much alone and go into themselves and gather and concentrate themselves; they must work; they must become something.

Shakespeare, As You Like It

I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are dispos'd to be merry. I will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou art inclin'd to sleep.

— Rosalind

Spinoza

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Nick Flynn, "The Ticking Is The Bomb"

Thich Nhat Hahn says it is a mistake to say, "The rain is falling," to say, "The wind is blowing." What is rain if it is not falling? he asks. What is wind if it is not blowing? The falling is the rain, the blowing is the wind. The next day, in the tree, I bring it up. He's talking about impermanence, someone says. It's the same reason we climb trees, someone else offers -- it's that we were once monkeys.

Shakespeare, Hamlet Vii

... in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep.