Life S Work Quotes

“Some strive to make themselves great. Others help others see and find their own greatness. It's the latter who really enrich the world we live in”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“Your people understand the forest: how the animals behave, where to find them, and so on. I want something similar—but instead of the forest as a whole, I want to understand dragons. They are not only here, you know; there are dragons in the savannah—” Mekeesawa nodded. “Well, there are more than that, all over the world. They live in the mountains and on the plains and maybe even in the ocean. I want to know them as you know the creatures of this forest.”

“But why?” Mekeesawa asked. His eyes were still merry with laughter, but his question was serious. “You don’t live in all those places.”

With the amount of time I have spent traveling in my life, one might make the argument that I do live in all those places, if only temporarily. But Mekeesawa’s point was a good one, and not easily dismissed. The Moulish understood the creatures of the Green Hell because their survival depended on it; my survival did not depend on my traveling the globe to find dragons. (Indeed, it has on more than one occasion nearly been detrimental to my life expectancy.) How could I answer him?

Thinking back on the matter now, it is possible my only true answer to that question is now in its second volume, with more to come. These memoirs are not only an accounting of my life; they are an accounting *for* it.”
― Marie Brennan, The Tropic of Serpents

“Our best canvas is all around us, in everything we touch and do.”
― Fennel Hudson, Fine Things: Fennel's Journal No. 8

“Fully aware that life is too short for the choice to be anything but irreparable, he had been distressed to discover that he felt no spontaneous attraction to any occupation. Rather sceptically, he looked over the array of available possibilities: prosecutors, who spend their whole lives persecuting people; schoolteachers, the butt of rowdy children; science and technology, whose advances bring enormous harm along with a small benefit; the sophisticated, empty chatter of the social sciences; interior design (which appealed to him because of his memories of his cabinetmaker grandfather), utterly enslaved by fashions he detested; the occupation of the poor pharmacists now reduced to peddlars of boxes and bottles. When he wondered; what should I choose for my whole life's work? his inner self would fall into the most uncomfortable silence.”
― Milan Kundera, Identity

“The possibilities of life are indeed novel and seemingly my life has crystallized itself in my body of work before death could dissipate it.”
― B.S. Murthy

“It seems to her that most of what she's done in her life has been of this ilk. Projects, ultimately inconsequential. Who have they helped?”
― Margaret Atwood, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

“All your work fitting neatly into just one book--how elegant. How dignified. Not taking up too much space in the world. Not asking for too much attention. What writer wants to look back and think, I wrote too much? But probably true of most.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables