Personal Musings

These are some quotes I like from some writers I like - I even know one or two writers quite well. While I do like my own writing, I readily admit that it is not yet as good as the other authors included here -- but I'm working on it. Robert Fulghum is probably my favorite story writer.

 

For the storyteller, truth is setting life free from reality.
You can't let the facts get in the way of the truth.

- Unknown


"Stories that instruct, renew, and heal provide a vital
nourishment to the psyche that cannot be obtained
in any other way. Stories reveal over and over again
the precious and peculiar knack that humans have
for triumph over travail. They provide all the vital
instructions we need to live a useful, necessary and
unbounded life -- a life of meaning, a life worth
remembering."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.


What is the truth about any one of us? I often wonder about that.
Psychiatrists, biographers, juries -- even close relatives -- know
how elusive it is. The eye that looks in on us and the eye that
looks out from us is not the same eye.

Most of us create ourselves -- arrange the facts of our lives like
flowers in a bowl -- cutting here, bending there, covering here,
revealing there, and filling in the blank spaces with greenery as
needed. Everything we can imagine becomes real.

Fabulists. A word to put the best face on what we do. Fabulists.
Tellers of tales. Actors in many sitcoms across the time of our
lives. Always the star in our show.

How shall we answer the question "Did you make all that up or is it
true?" With this reply: "Yes and no and I'm not sure sometimes
myself."

- Robert Fulghum, from his book "UH-OH"


I am terrible with names. I have a hard time remembering them.
I use to be good at remembering faces, but now even faces fade
from my memory. However, the older I get, the more thankful I am.

- Kevin Brooks

There are many voices inside of me that tell me many things.
But ultimately, the only voice I have to listen to is the one that says: GET UP.

- Nancy Kerrigan (believe it or not)
1994 Winter Olympics Nike commercial


To know God is life, the rest is just details.

- Albert Enstein

One step into ecstasy, I lost my watch.
Two steps in, my wallet and all my identification slipped away.
Three steps in, I started to dance.
I lost count after three.

-- Shemsuddin

 


These blues are like a fly, buzzin' all around the place
These blues are like a fly, buzzin' all around the place
You can swat at it, but it keeps landin' right back on your face

These blues are a like radio, loud and always on
These blues are a like radio, loud and always on
You can call the request line, but they ain't gonna play your song

These blues are like an onion, stingin' you in the eye
Just like an onion, stingin' you in the eye
Still you eat it anyway, even though it's makin' you cry

These blues are an elevator in the tallest building in town
These blues are like an elevator in the tallest building in town
Your baby's on the top floor, but this thing is only going down

- These Blues, Terry Adams from his album "Terrible"


Love the art within yourself, not yourself in the art.

- Constantin Stanislavsky

Like a white snail the toilet slides into the livingroom, demanding to be loved.
It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets.
In the book of the heart there is no mention made of plumbing.
And though we have spent our intimacy many times with you,
you belong to an unfortunate reference, which we would rather not embrace...
The toilet slides out of the livingroom like a white snail, flushing with grief.

- Russell Edson

What do you think of the world? You, the prism, measure the light of the world; it burns through your mind to throw a different spectroscopic reading onto white paper than anyone else anywhere can throw.

Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper. Make your own individual spectrospcopic reading.

Then, you, a new Element, are discovered, charted, named!

- Ray Bradbury, from his book
"Zen in the Art of Writing - Essays on Creativity"

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.

-- John Andrew

I don't have to drive, baby. I'm already driven...

Good things come to those who wait. Better things come to those who don't...

Some people look down and find money. Some people look down and lose their souls.

- Sekou Sundiata: The Blue Oneness of Dreams

Language is a woman, a rose constantly in the process of opening.
Vibrant, irresistible, incandescent.

- Carol Maso
Rupture, Verge, and Precipice / Precipice, Verge, and Hurt Not

 

Back to the guy in blue