E. Amato > E.'s Quotes

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”
― Maya Angelou

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”
― Maya Angelou

“Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”
― Stephen King

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham

“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.”
― G.E. Lessing

“People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
― James Baldwin

“nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

-excerpt of #35 from "100 Selected Poems”
― e.e. cummings

“When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.”
― Bob Dylan

“Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean & Impressive

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion.”
― Truman Capote

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.”
― John Burroughs

“The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.”
― Kay Ryan, Say Uncle

“Sometimes I say to a poem,

"I don't have the strength
To wring out another drop
Of the sun."

And the poem will often
Respond

By climbing onto a barroom table:

Then lifts its skirt, winks,
Causing the whole sky to
Fall.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
― Tom Waits

“Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
― Banana Yoshimoto

“I don't get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say.”
― Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
― August Wilson

“I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

“The first duty of wine is to be red. Don't talk to me of your white wines.”
― Henry Murger

“Be glad. Be good. Be brave.”
― Eleanor Hodgman Porter

“When a person has lived generously and fought fiercely, she deserves more than sadness at the end.”
― Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise