c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
we as authors have been writing about people we aren't for forever. We find a way to empathise, we find a way in. Female characters are no different. All they are are characters. They are people too. Instead of asking yourself, "How do I write this female soldier?" ask yourself, "How do I write this soldier? Where is she from, how was she raised, does she have a sense of humour? Is she big and tall, is she short and petite? How does her size affect her ability to fight? What is her favourite weapon, her least favourite? Why? Is she more logical than emotional? The other way around? Was she an only child and spoiled, was she the eldest of six siblings and a surrogate mother? How does that upbringing affect how she interacts with her team? etc etc and so forth." Notice how the first question gets you some kind of broad, generalised answer, likely resulting in a stereotype, and how the second version asks lots and lots of smaller questions with the goal of creating someone well rounded.One would hope, really, that we as authors ask such detailed questions of all our characters, regardless of gender.So let me, at long last, actually answer the original question:"How do I write a female character?"Write her the way you would write any other character. Give her dimension, give her strength but please also don't forget to give her weaknesses (for a totally strong nothing can beat her kind of girl is not a person, she's again a type - the polar opposite yet exactly the same as the damsel in distress).Create a person.
— Adrienne Kress
There is nothing quite like this novel with its rage and ragings, its discontent and angry restlessness. Wuthering Heights is a virgin's story.
— Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
It's a symbiotic process, writing. What I am makes the books—not part of me, all of me—and then the books themselves inform the sense of what I am. So the more I can be, the better the books will be.
— Jeanette Winterson
Nevertheless the severance is rather casual and it drops a stain on our admiration of Nora. Ibsen has put the leaving of her children on the same moral and emotional level as the leaving of her husband and we cannot, in our hearts, asssent to that. It is not only the leaving but the way the play does not have time for suffering, changes of heart. Ibsen has been too much a man in the end. He has taken the man's practice, if not his stated belief, that where self-realization is concerned children shall not be an impediment.
— Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read their letters to each other it is often necessary to consult the signature in order to be sure which one has done the writing. Their tone about themselves, their mood, is the fatal one of nostalgia--a passive, consuming, repetitive poetry. Sometimes one feels even its most felicitious and melodious moments are fixed, rigid in experession, and that their feelings have gradually merged with their manner, fallen under the domination of style. Even in their suffering, so deep and beyond relief, their tonal memory controls the words, shaping them into the Fitzgerald tune, always so regretful, regressive, and touched with a careful felicity.
— Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
[Charlotte Bronte] had thought of every maneuver for circumventing those stony obstructions of wives who would not remove themselves.
— Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
The large, gaping flaws in the construction of the stories--mad wives in the attic, strange apparitions in Belgium--are a representation of the life she could not face; these gothic subterfuges represent the mind at a breaking point, frantic to find any way out. If the flaws are only to be attributed to the practicce of popular fiction of the time, we cannot then explain the large amount of genuine feeling that goes into them. They stand for the hidden wishes of an intolerable life.
— Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
— Tahir Shah, Travels With Myself
As a fantasist, I well understand the power of escapism, particularly as relates to romance. But when so many stories aimed at the same audience all trumpet the same message – And Lo! There shall be Two Hot Boys, one of them your Heart’s Intended, the other a vain Pretender who is also hot and with whom you shall have guilty makeouts before settling down with your One True Love – I am inclined to stop viewing the situation as benign and start wondering why, for instance, the heroines in these stories are only ever given a powerful, magical destiny of great importance to the entire world so long as fulfilling it requires male protection, guidance and companionship, and which comes to an end just as soon as they settle their inevitable differences with said swain and start kissing.I mean to invoke is something of the danger of mob rule, only applied to narrative and culture. Viz: that the comparative harmlessness of individuals does not prevent them from causing harm en masse. Take any one story with the structure mentioned above, and by itself, there’s no problem. But past a certain point, the numbers begin to tell – and that poses a tricky question. In the case of actual mobs, you’ll frequently find a ringleader, or at least a core set of agitators: belligerent louts who stir up feeling well beyond their ability to contain it. In the case of novels, however, things aren’t so clear cut. Authors tell the stories they want to tell, and even if a number of them choose to write a certain kind of narrative either in isolation or inspired by their fellows, holding any one of them accountable for the total outcome would be like trying to blame an avalanche on a single snowflake. Certainly, we may point at those with the greatest (arguable) influence or expostulate about creative domino effects, but as with the drop that breaks the levee, it is impossible to try and isolate the point at which a cluster of stories became a culture of stories – or, for that matter, to hold one particular narrative accountable for the whole.
— Foz Meadows
The 'swapping' is interesting. This practice one had thought confined to certain earnest Americans in the smaller, more tedious cities, to those wives and husbands who had read sex manuals and radically wanted more of life even if it had to be, like pizza, brought in from around the corner--all of this was accomplished by Bloomsbury in the lightest, most spontaneous and good-natured manner.
— Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet.", Harper's Magazine, May 1948)
— W.H. Auden
Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly – if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist – then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty – or rather, why should we – if we’re not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until someone decides to clean it up.Blog Post: Love Team Freezer
— Foz Meadows
Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness
— Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way
Revenge is a dish best served published!
— Lisa Kovanda
But in the wake of 'Bullet,' all the guys wanted to know was, 'How's it doing? How's it selling?' How to tell them I didn't give a flying fuck how it was doing in the marketplace, that what I cared about was how it was doing in the reader's heart?
— Stephen King, Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales
If we can write or sing or create in some way, even when we are dealing with difficulties or pain, then it becomes something bigger than ourselves — and often beautiful.
— Brenda Peterson
I've learned to let my characters speak and act the way they want to! I've tried to interfere but they just get angry at me and throw big rocks.
— Shandy L. Kurth
There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story., 1958)
— Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference
Writing is hard work, not magic. It begins with deciding why you are writing and whom you are writing for. What is your intent? What do you want the reader to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it. It's also about making a serious time commitment and getting the project done.
— Suze Orman
I read and write for character. If I like and can relate to the characters in a story I can enjoy any kind of story. I also want something with a definitive plot—you know, beginning, middle and end--that has forward motion. I don’t like series books that leave you hanging after you’ve finished a book and in my own fiction I try to make sure that there’s always an entry point for those who are new to the book as well as long-time readers.
— Charles de Lint
Now everybody who knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a business letter does not deserve the paper on which it is written unless it contains at least one significant phrase that is worth waking up in the night to remember and think about.
— Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, Molly Make-Believe
A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction.
— Stephen King
Please don't entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it witout a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flamelike -- breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? ... Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you'll wait for ever.
— Ngaio Marsh, Death on the Air and Other Stories
True writing is not an art or science but it's an anthem to preach own soul
— Kunal Jajal
There's no equivalent to Mozart in writing.
— Fran Lebowitz
But I also believe there is enormous value in the piece of writing that goes no further than the one person for whom it was intended, that no combination of written words is more eloquent than those exchanged in letters between lovers or friends, or along the pale blue lines of private diaries, where people take communion with themselves.
— Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees
It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader.Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party.
— Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose
Sevgilim! (…) Cıgara içmekten vazgeçilebilir mi? Hikâye yazmaktan da, körolası, vazgeçemiyoruz. İşte bir müddettir ben de, elimde cıgara, adam arıyor gibiyim. Ne kadar üstü başı düzgünler, suratı ciddiler, hali azametliler içinde kalmışım ki bir türlü hikâyeme yanaşamıyorum.
— Sait Faik Abasıyanık, Mahalle Kahvesi
[W]hen I put Jorge in the library I did not yet know he was the murderer. He acted on his own, so to speak. And it must not be thought that this is an 'idealistic' position, as if I were saying that the characters have an autonomous life and the author, in a kind of trance, makes them behave as they themselves direct him. That kind of nonsense belongs in term papers. The fact is that the characters are obliged to act according to the laws of the world in which they live. In other words, the narrator is the prisoner of his own premises.
— Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose
Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore.
— Edith Wharton
His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose jibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past ("en me retraçant ces détails, j'en suis à me demander s'ils sont réels, ou bien si je les ai rêvés"). As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority. You should write one.Seth Godin
— Seth Godin, How the Fierce Handle Fear: Secrets to Succeeding in Challenging Times
Online review sites are the slushpiles of feedback.
— S. Kelley Harrell
I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).
— Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose
When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, "weaving fearful vision" ... A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one's great work on "Secret Knowledge," then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains the deficiency.
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden.
— Gene Wolfe, Shadows of the New Sun
That night she wrote a hasty sketch and showed it to Oliver. "It's all right," he said. "But I'd take out that stuff about Olympian mountains and the Stygian caverns of the mine. That's about used up, I should think.
— Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Do one thing every day that scares you.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
— Neil Gaiman, Fables and Reflections
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
— Maya Angelou
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.
— Maya Angelou
I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
— Edgar Allan Poe
It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.
— Lou Holtz
I dream my painting and I paint my dream.
— Vincent van Gogh
You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
— Jane Goodall
Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
— Thomas Jefferson
If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Love is the absence of judgment.
— Dalai Lama XIV
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Tomorrow will be better.”“But what if it’s not?” I asked.“Then you say it again tomorrow. Because it might be. You never know, right? At some point, tomorrow will be better.
— Morgan Matson, Amy & Roger's Epic Detour
It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.
— Babe Ruth
The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it.
— Jordan Belfort
When someone tells me "no," it doesn't mean I can't do it, it simply means I can't do it with them.
— Karen E. Quinones Miller
Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.
— Susan Sontag
Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.
— David Richo
When all is said and done, more is said than done.
— Lou Holtz
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway.
— Mary Kay Ash
There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
You'll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.
— Lou Holtz
With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to." #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]
— Jim Jarmusch
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
— Martin Luther
If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here.
— Donald J. Trump
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
— Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.
— Paul Klee
The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day.
— Henry David Thoreau
Imagination is the highest form of research.
— Albert Einstein
You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.
— Lou Holtz
The price of greatness is responsibility.
— Winston S. Churchill
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
— Maya Angelou
No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
— Thomas A. Edison
Don't loaf and invite inspiration light out after it with a club. 
— Jack London
People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
— Dalai Lama XIV
What the superior man seeks is in himself what the small man seeks is in others. 
— Confucius
The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.
— Tricia Cunningham
The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you.
— R.J. Palacio, Wonder
Dreams are only dreams until you wake up and make them real.
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
A bruise is a lesson... and each lesson makes us better.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
— Alan W. Watts
The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.
— Ernest Hemingway
I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.
— Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon.
— Paul Brandt
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
— William Blake
You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.
— Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.
— Anaïs Nin
You are the only you God made... God made you and broke the mold.
— Max Lucado, Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot
Hikayatin mo lahat ng kakilala mo na magkaroon ng kahit isa man lang paboritong libro sa buhay nila. Dahil wala nang mas kawawa pa sa mga taong literado pero hindi nagbabasa.
— Bob Ong
You cannot expect victory and plan for defeat.
— Joel Osteen
speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. tomorrow comes more brightly...
— Mary Anne Radmacher
There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
— Wendell Berry
It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
Ideas come from everything
— Alfred Hitchcock
Visualize this thing you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin.
— Robert Collier
When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.
— Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Always remember, your focus determines your reality.
— George Lucas
Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.
— J.K. Rowling
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
— Rabindranath Tagore
If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.
— John Mayer
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. 
— Pearl S. Buck
For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
— Hunter S. Thompson
You're better than this. Better than whatever it is you're going to do now.
— Richelle Mead, Last Sacrifice
Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.
— Henry Miller
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.
— E. Joseph Cossman
What we do comes out of who we believe we are.
— Rob Bell, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality
Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.
— Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can't, but in the things you've never considered doing.
— Richard Bandler
The whales do not sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song.
— Gregory Colbert
Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.
— Isabel Allende, The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir
What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?
— Toni Morrison
Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.You can do it.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.
— Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
We must assume every event has significance and contains a message that pertains to our questions...this especially applies to what we used to call bad things...the challenge is to find the silver lining in every event, no matter how negative.
— James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
— Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable
— Hunter S. Thompson
I stay cool, and dig all jive,That's the way I stay alive.My motto, as I live and learn, isDig and be dugIn return.
— Langston Hughes
If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.
— Oscar Wilde
If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
— Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”"Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.
— Ovid, Metamorphoses
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
— Jack Welch
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.", 25 February 2010]
— Hilary Mantel
Don't give me songs, give me something to sing about!
— Mutanat Enemy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
When you ask God for a gift, Be thankful if he sends, Not diamonds, pearls or riches, but the love of real true friends.
— Helen Steiner Rice
Love has no culture, boundaries, race and religion. It is pure and beautiful like early morning sunrise falling in lake.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame
— Charles Caleb Colton
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals, and to imagine that together we can do great things.In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.
— Caroline Kennedy
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.
— Chuck Close
Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others....Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.
— Pema Chödrön
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter usfrom the support of a cause we believe to be just.
— Abraham Lincoln
Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
— Vince Lombardi Jr.
Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will
— Jack Welch
There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.
— Toni Morrison
I must work harder to achieve my goal of not seeking approval from those whose approval I'm not even sure is important to me.
— Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe
sometimes knowing when to give up is the real test of character...-annabelle granger
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Match Me If You Can
Pride is a funny thing it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure. 
— Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
‎Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.
— Henry Ward Beecher
In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.
— Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.
— Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And she said gently-that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born-and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.
— Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.
— Warren Buffett
Never give advice unless you have walked the walk, because anybody can talk the talk.
— Valencia Mackie
Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing!
— John Wesley
Life doesn't require that we be the best, only that we try our best.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.
— Fulton J. Sheen
How you react emotionally is a choice in any situation.
— Judith Orloff
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in., March 9, 1998]
— Toni Morrison
The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.
— Roman Payne
We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust.That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.
— David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing
Your life is your spiritual path.It's what's right in front of you. You can't live anyone else's life. The task is to live yours and stop trying to copy one you think looks better.
— Sandy Nathan, Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice
I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,that Joplin had the last drunken throat,that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.
— Patti Smith
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.
— Richard Bach
Failure is an event, never a person.
— William D. Brown
Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind. 
— Mary Ellen Chase
Our biggest regrets are not for the things we have done but for the things we haven't done
— Chad Michael Murray
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
— Christopher Reeve
until the end of the world,all whys will be answered,but now,you can only ask!
— Bob Marley, Bob Marley Talking
Be fearless. Have the courage to take risks. Go where there are no guarantees. Get out of your comfort zone even if it means being uncomfortable. The road less traveled is sometimes fraught with barricades bumps and uncharted terrain. But it is on that road where your character is truly tested And have the courage to accept that you’re not perfect nothing is and no one is — and that’s OK.
— Katie Couric
I believe that what we get out of life is what we've set ourselves up to get, so there's no such thing as an inconsequential decision. Our destinies are the culmination of all the choices we've made along the way, which is why it's imperative to listen hard to your inner voice when it speaks up. Don't let anyone else's noise drown it out.
— Megan McCafferty, Second Helpings
Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder. 
— Eberhard Arnold
Never judge a work of art by its defects
— Washington Allston
If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won’t. You’ll already have made that art, and when they’re talking about the last thing you did, you should already be making the next thing.If bad reviews (of whatever kind) upset you, just don’t read them. It’s not like you’ve signed an agreement with the person buying the book to exchange your book for their opinion.Do whatever you have to do to keep making art. I know people who love bad reviews, because it means they’ve made something happen and made people talk; I know people who have never read any of their reviews. It’s their call. You get on with making art.
— Neil Gaiman
I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.
— Vincent van Gogh
The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, anew continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to bereleased and channeled toward some great good.
— Brian Tracy
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
— Toni Morrison
Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.
— Dorianne Laux, What We Carry
In my experience, nothing worthwhile has ever really been all that easy. But it certainly has been worthwhile regardless how difficult it seemed. 
— Robert Fanney
There's nothing more inspiring than the complexity and beauty of the human heart.
— Cynthia Hand, Hallowed
Love is only a word, until we decide to let it possess us with all its force.Love is only a word, until someone arrives to give it meaning.Don't give up. Remember, it's always the last key on the key ring that opens the door.
— Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra
Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.
— Robert Bloch
Inspiration is always a surprising visitor.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
The most intriguing people you will encounter in this life are the people who had insights about you, that you didn't know about yourself.
— Shannon L. Alder
I don't know exactly where ideas come from, but when I'm working well ideas just appear. I've heard other people say similar things - so it's one of the ways I know there's help and guidance out there. It's just a matter of our figuring out how to receive the ideas or information that are waiting to be heard.
— Jim Henson
A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.
— Rita Mae Brown
A challenge only becomes an obstacle when you bow to it.
— Ray A. Davis
A mind possessed by unmade books.
— Michael Faudet
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
— Toni Morrison
Silence is the language of Om. We need silence to be able to reach our Self. Both internal and external silence is very important to feel the presence of that supreme Love.
— Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
— Henry David Thoreau
It is the most fun I’m ever going to have. I love to write. I love it. I mean, there’s nothing in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I’m so very bad at it. It’s the greatest peace when I’m in a scene, and it’s just me and the character, that’s it, that’s where I want to live my life.
— Joss Whedon
I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.
— Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
People always ask me"Son what does it takeTo reach out and touch your dreams?"To them I always sayAre you hungry?Are you thirsty?Is it a fire that burns you up inside?How bad do you want it?How bad do you need it?Are you eating, sleeping, dreamingWith that one thing on your mind?How bad do you want it?How bad do you need it?Cause if you want it allYou've got to lay it all out on the line
— Tim McGraw, Tim McGraw -- Live Like You Were Dying: Piano/Vocal/Chords
Never run from the enemy, tackle them
— Victoria Addino
Halfway down the aisle, Jamie suddenly seemed to tire, and they stopped while she caught her breath...It was, I remembered thinking, the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make. In every way, a walk to remember.
— Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
You can t coast uphill.
— Roger Crawford
We are wiser than we know.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter. 
— Stephen King, Duma Key
If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.
— Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs. Rather than being taugh to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others' versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else! When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if...If we had known who we really were.
— Julia Cameron
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we'd like to be. That's not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you've accomplished, rather than thinking of what's left to be done (p. 159).
— John Bingham, No Need for Speed: A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running