I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent—and working at a pace so slow—that I would be able to hear myself living.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert
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Able to hear myself →
Until I hear →
I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say. Then I thought, “I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say”; but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.
~ Mary Rueflé
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Relationships →
I’m saying that it is necessary to share meaning. A society is a link of relationships among people and institutions, so that we can live together. But it only works if we have a culture—which implies that we share meaning; i.e., significance, purpose, and value. Otherwise it falls apart.
~ David Bohm
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Just kidding →
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
~ Isaac Asimov
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Little things →
The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.
~ Ernest Dimnet
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Irritation →
A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.
~ Kevin Kelly
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There is a tide →
There is a tide in the affairs of men
~ Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea as we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
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On creativity →
A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All this happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may sharpen our art.
~ Jorge Luis Borges
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Flattery →
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
~ Denis Diderot
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