Mortimer Adler

"In the case of good books,

the point is not how many of them you can get through,

but rather how many can get through to you."

Mortimer Adler

Gregory Victor Babic

A Grand resource

It has been a joy to discover Australian author, Gregory Babic’s book, Words to Inspire Writers. As a huge collector of quotes and verses, a 300 author 1,100 quote tome was one just I couldn’t pass up. I've been reading through the gi-normous book of quotes amassed here. My heavens! What a vast body of work! It truly is impressive.

As a book of days with three quotes per day, Babic has designed the passages to carry writers through three stages of a daily writing process: the preparation and planning stage, the creation stage, and “…the Post-Writing or Celebration Stage of Publishing and Marketing.”

I like being surprised daily by the vast number of brilliant authors, spanning thousands of years, from whom Babic has gleaned priceless gems of wisdom. The index in the book’s finale is worth double its weight in gold, and truly simplifies finding favorite authors and quotes. It seems impossible to peruse such a fine volume and not come away inspired and enriched. I’m happy to reference Words to Inspire Writers and recommend it to friends and writers.

It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak, and another to hear.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

Pavlova on Success

To follow, without halt,

one aim:

There's the secret of success.
Anna Pavlova

Nietzsche on Love

There is always some madness in love.
But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Ray Bradbury

"My stories run up and bite me on the leg-

I respond by writing down everything

that goes on during the bite.

When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off."

Ray Bradbury

Bryce Courtenay

"Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions,

as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder,

love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen,

then we no longer exist as a people."

Bryce Courtenay

Thoreau

If thou art a writer, write as if the time were short,

for it is indeed short, at the longest.

~Henry David Thoreau

Deadlines

I don’t work well to deadlines,

I just don’t work at all without them.

~Kim Patterson, novelist and friend

I don't know anything about music.

In my line you don't have to.
Elvis Presley (1935 - 1977)

Virginia Woolf

"Second hand books are wild books,

homeless books;

they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather,

and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack."
Virginia Woolf

Barbara Tuchman

"Books are the carriers of civilization.

Without books, history is silent,

literature dumb, science crippled,

thought and speculation at a standstill."
Barbara Tuchman

Trees

I think that I shall never see

a billboard lovely as a tree.

Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,

I'll never see a tree at all.
Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971)

Time

Time does not change us.

It just unfolds us.
Max Frisch

Seasonal Offerings

The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.
Henry Beston

Television

Television enables you to be entertained

in your home by people

you wouldn't have in your home.
David Frost

Persevering

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

Great works are performed

not by strength, but perseverance.
~Samuel Johnson

Happiness is...

Happiness is like a butterfly

the more you chase after it,

the more it eludes you.

But if you will sit quietly,

it will come and rest

on your shoulder.

~~author unknown

The Weapons of Mass Destruction

We all know books burn - yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know books are weapons."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Dinner and a Story

"My family can always tell when

I'm well into a novel because

the meals get very crummy."
Anne Tyler

I have been a little guilty of this myself. If I could just get this last scene right, and puzzle together the rest of the script, we could eat elaborate gourmet meals! Or so I think.

Because just as I am about to finish the last revision, I get another idea for a story and I can cook and think until the plot thickens and then, I feel desperate to write. Currently, I'm trying to finish a script and a book.

Something

Better to do something imperfectly

than to do nothing
flawlessly.

~ Robert Schuller