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“Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior.”
―
―
“An empirical philosophy is in any case a kind of intellectual disrobing. We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us. We cannot achieve recovery of primitive naïveté. But there is attainable a cultivated naïveté of eye, ear and thought.”
― Experience and Nature
― Experience and Nature
“Writing is difficult. You do it all alone without encouragement and without any certainty that you'll ever be published or paid or even that you'll be able to finish the particular work you've begun. It isn't easy to persist amid all that....
Sometimes when I'm interviewed, the interviewer either compliments me on my 'talent,' my 'gift,' or asks me how I discovered it.... I used to struggle to answer this politely, to explain that I didn't believe much in writing talent. People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent--or habit--was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.
I suspect this is the most important thing I've said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It's a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is important, but difficult, important, but frightening. We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
The word, again, is 'persist'!”
― Bloodchild and Other Stories
Sometimes when I'm interviewed, the interviewer either compliments me on my 'talent,' my 'gift,' or asks me how I discovered it.... I used to struggle to answer this politely, to explain that I didn't believe much in writing talent. People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent--or habit--was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.
I suspect this is the most important thing I've said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It's a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is important, but difficult, important, but frightening. We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
The word, again, is 'persist'!”
― Bloodchild and Other Stories
“Usually the things that kill us are the things we do every single day.”
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―
“When I was a young man and very well thought of,
I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.
I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,
And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied.
But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know
The secret I shelter and savor and save
I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'
The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;
The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.
I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,
And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.
But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see
There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave.
My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'
At last came a lady both knowing and tender,
Saying, 'you're not at all what they take you to be.'
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea.
And I say to myself when there's time for a word,
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,
'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.”
― The Last Unicorn
I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.
I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,
And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied.
But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know
The secret I shelter and savor and save
I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'
The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;
The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.
I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,
And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.
But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see
There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave.
My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'
At last came a lady both knowing and tender,
Saying, 'you're not at all what they take you to be.'
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea.
And I say to myself when there's time for a word,
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,
'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.”
― The Last Unicorn
Sar’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Sar’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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Favorite Genres
Biography, Business, Chick-lit, Comics, Contemporary, Ebooks, Fantasy, Fiction, Gay and Lesbian, Graphic novels, Historical fiction, History, Humor and Comedy, Manga, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Religion, Romance, Science fiction, Self help, Spirituality, Travel, and Young-adult
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