In recognition of Black History Month, Transformation Publications will present poems, essays, and other artistic creations by Black artists, writers, and musicians. Maya Angelou (April 04,1928 - May 28, 2014) Phenomenal Woman Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size But when I start to tell …
Lyndon B Johnson On Race
In recognition of Black History Month, Transformation Publications will present poems, essays, and other artistic creations by Black artists, musicians, and writers. Lyndon B Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973) We believe all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings because of the color …
Martin L King On Satisfaction
In recognition of Black History Month, Transformation Publications will present poems, essays, and other artistic creations by Black artists, musicians, and writers. Martin L King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) No, no, we are not satisfied and will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. …
Derek Walcott On Bleecker Street
In recognition of Black History Month, Transformation Publications will present poems, essays, and other artistic creations by Black artists, musicians, and writers. Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930 – March 17, 2017) Bleecker Street, Summer Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor, for the eternal idleness of the imagined return, for rare flutes and …
Frederick Douglass On Reflection
In recognition of Black History Month, Transformation Publications will present poems, essays, and other artistic creations by Black artists, musicians, and writers. Frederick Douglass (February 02, 1818–February 20, 1895) The process by which man is able to posit his own subjective nature outside of himself, giving it form, color, space, and all the attributes of …
James Baldwin On Freedom
In recognition of Black History Month, Transformation Publications will present poems, essays, and other artistic creations by Black artists, musicians, and writers. James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to …
Nimblewill Nomad On Happiness
Nimblewill Nomad (1938 -) aka Meredith J. Eberhart. I tell my friends: every year I’ve got less and less, and every year I’m a happier man. I just wonder what it’s going to be like when I don’t have anything. That’s the way we come, and that’s the way we go. I’m just preparing for …
Jane Addams On Women
Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) I am not one of those who believe — broadly speaking — that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the …
Alan Watts On Nature
Alan Watts (January 06, 1915 – November 16, 1973) The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad.
Annie Proulx On Writing
Annie Proulx (August 22, 1935 -) You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different worlds on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
Robert McCrum On Aging
Robert McCrum (July 07, 1953 -) With the onset of these later years, the fragile self finds that “less is more”, and learns to moderate its youthful egotism. Young people think they are immortal, and that the world revolves around them. Older people know they are mortal, that their future is not infinite, and also …
Robery Bly On Listening To The Köln Concert
Robert Bly (December 23, 1926 -) After we had loved each other intently, we heard notes tumble together, in late winter, and we heard ice falling from the ends of twigs. The notes abandon so much as they move. They are the food not eaten, the comfort not taken, the lies not spoken. The music …
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John Quincy Adams On Books
John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767–February 23, 1848) …I have been attempted to abandon my books altogether — This however is impossible — for the habit has so long been fixed in me, as to have become a passion, and when once severed from my books, I find little or nothing in life, to fill …
Marina Umaschi Bers On Technology
Marina Umaschi Bers Technology can be a vehicle to help people create and collaborate better, but at the end of the day, people need to learn to work with people.
John Ashbery On Poetry
John Ashbery (July 28, 1927 - September 03, 2017) I don't quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I'm not quite sure. I don't want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, …
Ursula K Le Guin Anger And Hatred
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) The racism, misogyny, and counter-rationality of the reactionary right in American politics for the last several years is a frightening exhibition of the destructive force of anger deliberately nourished by hate, encouraged to rule thought, invited to control behavior. I hope our republic survives …
Oliver Sacks On Living
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 – August 30, 2015) The most we can do is to write — intelligently, creatively, evocatively — about what it is like living in the world at this time.
Rainer Maria Rilke On Love
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. Love is at …
Stanlty Kunitz On The Layers
Stanley Kunitz (July 29, 1905 – May 14, 2006) I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather …
Simone Weil On Closeness
Simone Weil (February 03, 1909 – August 24, 1943) The joy of meeting and the sorrow of separation. We should welcome these gifts … with our whole soul, and experience to the full, and with the same gratitude, all the sweetness or bitterness as the case may be.
George Bernard Shaw On Indifference
George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 – November 02, 1950) The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That's the essence of inhumanity.
Louis Menand On Poetry
Louis Menand (January 21, 1952 -) I started out as a poet, too, but I eventually realized that whatever my poems were expressing, it wasn’t me. They were too obsessed with looking like poems, I think—and sometimes they did, just poems that somebody else had written. I switched to nonfiction prose, and found, to my …
Martin L King On Racism
Martin L King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today... it is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle …
Tim Cook On Engagement
Tim Cook (November 01, 1960 -) Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be. The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena. And we engage when we agree and we engage when we disagree. I think it’s very important to do that because you don’t …
Charles Duhigg On Habits
Charles Duhigg (1974 -) At the core of every habit is a neurological loop with three parts: A cue, a routine and a reward. To understand how to create habits — such as exercise habits — you must learn to establish the right cues and rewards.
Mary Oliver On The Journey
Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 - January 17, 2019) One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!"each voice cried. But you didn't …
Louise Glück On Writing
Louise Glück (April 22, 1943 -) Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you've no longer been bested by these events.
Rainer Maria Rilke On Listening
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) If a thing is to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon, which, thanks to your laborious and exclusive love, is one placed at the center of the Universe, …
Anaïs Nin On Artists
Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) For me the artist simple means one who can transform ordinary life into a beautiful creation, with his craft. But I did not mean creation strictly applied only to the arts. I meant creation in life, the creation of a child, a garden, a house, a …
Elizabeth Bishop On One Art
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard …
Epictetus On Choice
Epictetus (A.D. c. 55 – 135) We need to regularly stop and take stock; to sit down and determine within ourselves which things are worth valuing and which things are not; which risks are worth the cost and which are not. Even the most confusing or hurtful aspects of life can be made more tolerable …
Tao Writer On Friendship And Solitude
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) I do not have many friends because friendship requires a lot of time and for me, time is a premium commodity in rather short supply these days. I do not have the energy and time necessary to have and develop more new friendships. “To have a friend takes time,” …
Steve Jobs On Death
Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955– October 5, 2011) No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely …
