desayunoencama has suggested posting quotes about writing and reading in our journals; here are a few current favorites:
in which birds speak the truth
and pity cures the blind,
and beauty reaches deep
to prove a royal mind?
Death is a small mistake
there, where the kiss revives;
Jenny, we make just dreams
out of our unjust lives.”
–Lisel Mueller, “Reading the Brothers Grimm to Jenny”
“I was taught to paint like other people–but I thought, if I paint like other people, I’ll never paint as well as the person I’m taught to paint like.”
–Georgia O’Keeffe
“And as for adults, the world of fantasy books returns us to the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, have been excised from adult vocabularies. These words are the pronography of innocence, words which adults no longer dare to use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existance, and the words are:
“Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.”
–Jane Yolen, Touch Magic
“When we concentrate in our writing, it is good. But we should always concentrate, not by blocking out the world, but by allowing it all to exist. This is a very tricky balance.”
–Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
“So the Dark did a simple thing. They showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing–fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to acoomplish anything of great worth–fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such great fears, that are the doom of the people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds.”
— Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree
“Remember laughter. You’ll need it even in the blessed isles of ever after.”
–Jame Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks