John Uzoma Ekwugha Amaechi (November 26, 1970) The most unlikely of people in the most improbable circumstances can be extraordinary. Not that nonsense that ‘If you believe, it will come true’ – that’s bollocks – but if you set a plan, are willing to work, endure extreme mundanity, really embrace some discomfort, I think you …
William Strunk Jr On Writing
William Strunk Jr. (July 1, 1869 – September 26, 1946) Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, …
Andrew Wyeth On Art
Andrew Wyeth (July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) The brain must not interfere. You're painting so constantly that your brain disappears, and your subconscious goes into your fingers, and it just flows. If you think you're painting a good watercolor you can be sure it's lousy. It is important to forget what you are …
Bill Brandt On Photography
Bill Brandt (May 02, 1904 – December 20, 1983) He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time, or the traveller who enters a strange country. Most photographers would feel a sense of embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within …
Anne Lamott On The Journey
Anne Lamott (April 10, 1954 -) If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in.
Jose Alberto Gutierrez On Books
Jose Alberto Gutierrez I realized that people were throwing books away in the rubbish. I started to rescue them. There was a lack of them in our neighborhood, so we started to help. The more books we give away, the more come to us. Books transformed me, so I think books are a symbol of …
Chris Van Allsburg On Christmas Magic
Chris Van Allsburg (June 18, 1949 -) At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me as it …
John Keats On Happiness
John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness - I look not for it if it be not in the present hour - nothing startles me beyond the Moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window …
Ralph Ellison On Writing
Ralph Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget …
Jean Cocteau On Poets
Jean Cocteau (July 05, 1889 – October 11, 1963) The job of the poet (a job which can't be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.
Rainer Maria Rilke On Love
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) For the things whose essential life you want to express, begin by asking, "Are you free? Are you prepared to devote all your love to me? And if the thing sees that you are preoccupied, with even a mere particle of your interest, it shuts …
Seneca On Sorrow
Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD65) Let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the worst afflictions with a brave and resolute staunchness. …
Nadine Gordimer On Writing
Nadine Gordimer (November 20, 1923 – July 13, 2014) All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.
Alan Bennett On Reading
Alan Bennett (May 09, 1934 -) The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even …
George Orwell On Truth
George Orwell (June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950) In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Sandra Hochman On A Word
Sandra Hochman (1936 -) If only there were a perfect word I could give to you — a world like some artichoke that could sit on the table, dry, and become itself.
Cliff Joseph On The Power Of Art
Cliff Joseph (June 23, 1922 - November 08, 2020) Those who are at the head of the oppressive system know well the power of art and fear it in the hands of the people. That is why power structures throughout man’s history have sought to suppress and control the creative artist. Mr. Joseph’s “Ancestral Affirmation” …
Elie Wiesel On Silence
Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Jewish Holocaust 1941 — 1945
Amy Tan On Success
Amy Tan (February 19, 1952 -) External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope …
John Donne On Mankind
John Dunne (January 22, 1572 – March 31, 1631) No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and …
Stephen Dunn On Writing
Stephen Dunn (1939 -) You must be a little driven, and what you're doing must be crucial to you in order not to be defeated by the likely neglect that awaits you, the lack of rewards, and the fact that, by and large, your culture doesn't take you seriously.
Gabriele D’Annunzio On Joy
Gabriele D'Annunzio (March 12, 1863 – March 01, 1938) Joy is the most certain means of knowledge offered us by Nature....he who has suffered much is less wise than he who has much enjoyed.
Leo Tolstoy On God
Leo Tolstoy (September 09, 1828 – November 20, 1910) At the thought of God, happy waves of life welled up inside me. Everything came alive, took on meaning. The moment I thought I knew God, I lived. But the moment I forgot him, the moment I stopped believing, I also stopped living.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein On Love
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (February 23, 1950 -) A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simply vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simply cease altogether?
Jimmy Carter On War
Jimmy Carter (October 01, 1924 -) War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. Pearl Harbor December 07, 1941
Rosamond Lehmann On Sound
Rosamond Lehmann (February 03, 1901 – March 12, 1990) It was something to do with the sound... the way sound made images, shell within shell of them softly unclosing... the way words became colors and scents... and the surprise when it happened, the ache of desire, the surge of excitement, the sense of fulfillment, the …
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche On Living
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life.
Carl Jung On Happiness
Carl Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 06, 1961) There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by …
Jean Rhys On Truth
Jean Rhys (August 24, 1890– May 14, 1979) If you want to write the truth, you must write about yourself. It must go out from yourself. I don't see what else you can do. I am the only real truth I know.
Adyashanti On “I”
Adyashanti (October 26, 1962 -) The real sense of 'I' is the sense of being. The sense of being is not in any particular place -- it's everywhere. It's spread throughout the whole of consciousness.
Howard Zinn On War
Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922– January 27, 2010) We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. Syrian Civil War 2011 to Present
