"I Always Worked Until I Had Something Done"

"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." - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Good Quotation: "Individual Power"

"Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.

"It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.

"It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew."- David Brooks, The New York Times

Mental Health Quote for the Day

"Pain and suffering are inevitable, but misery is a choice." - a quadriplegic friend of a friend

"I Have Wasted My Life"

"I'm sorry you haven't had a happy life," my mother said. She was comparing me with my sisters, all homeowners, settled, and wonderful: blond brick, gas fireplace. Then she's got the writer, for godsakes, a-comin' by with red-rimmed eyes again.

"That's not exactly true," I said. "You mean that I haven't had a normal life.

"How could I have had a normal life? I was born with a talent. I assume that meant I should use it. So I use it. Anyone or anything that tries to stop me or get in my way, I'm gone."

"That's the problem," Mom said.

I don't argue with Mom, or try to explain things. So I let her think she stung me a little. That's the price I pay for having caused her so much worry.

Thank God that writers sent quotations down through the ages to help us. There's that shocking line by poet James Wright: "I have wasted my life." What shocked people was that the line expresses not anguish, but joy. Writers understand this perfectly.

Likeable Quotations About Art & Artists

The social responsibility of the artist is reuniting people with their reality. – I Ching

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing. – Tennessee Williams

But isn’t creating a poem / skinning a pelt? – Vladimir Mayakovsky

All critics are infantile before the texts. – Catharine R. Stimpson

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything You gave me.” – Erma Bombeck

One has to commit a painting the way one commits a crime. – Degas

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. – Thich Nhat Hanh

When the right words hit, I own the previously unknown, repossess the past, and my heart rings like a bell. – Mary Ann deGrandpre Kelly