Andrew

“The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.”
― Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“Don’t let small thinking cut your life down to size. Think big, aim high, act bold. And see just how big you can blow up your life.”
― Gary Keller, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

“The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.”
― Mother Teresa

“Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed.

Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.

Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?

Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.

Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.

Play with syntax.

Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better – if you have to say it, you will.

Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.

If you ask a question, don’t answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time).

Maximum sentence length: seventeen words.

Minimum: One.

Don’t be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don’t love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.”
― Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing