Today is the birthday of the following people:
Maxine Hong Kingston (1940 - ):
“You can't eat straight A's.”
and
“Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people.”
and
“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.”
Aron Ralston (1975 -
):
“Everything happens
for a reason, and part of that beauty of life is that we're not allowed to know
those reasons for certain.”
and
“Perhaps it’s time, I
muse, to close those chapters and remember the enduring lesson of my
entrapment: that relationships, not accomplishments, are what’s important in
life.”
Steve Almond (1967 -
):
“We need
books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for
the company of a wise, true friend.”
and
“Art is what happens
when things don't work out, when you're licking your wounds. Art is, to a
larger extent than people would like to think, a productive licking of the
wounds.”
and
“The single biggest
reason I got my stories taken in various literary magazines - and I want to
stress this - is because I refused to give up. Period.”
Simon Le Bon (1958 -
):
"My kids love vinyl, I
had to teach them how to put the needle on the records. Now they're worried
about scratching the records, but it's incredible!"
Fran Lebowitz (1950 -
):
“Think before you
speak. Read before you think.”
and
“As a teenager you
are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the
phone is for you.”
and
“Romantic love is
mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality,
and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone
that you really saw. ”
John Cleese (1939 - ):
“He who laughs most,
learns best”
and
“If you want creative
workers, give them enough time to play”
and
“Because, as we all
know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do
important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do
little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so
sure about.”
and
“Nothing will stop
you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake.”
Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963):
“And by the way,
everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it,
and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
and
“Can you understand?
Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all
my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and
I have so much - so very much to learn.”
Dylan Thomas (1914 –
1953):
“A good poem is a
contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been
added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to
extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
and
“Though lovers be
lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.”
Theodore Roosevelt
(1858 – 1919):
“Believe you can and
you're halfway there.”
and
“If you could kick
the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit
for a month.”
and
“I am a part of
everything that I have read.”
and
“No one cares how
much you know, until they know how much you care”
and
“Courage is not
having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.”
