"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon." E.L. Doctorow

"Vision propelled him forward again to experience, as despair compels us to extinction."

John le Carre, 'The Looking Glass War'

okay I can never remember any quotes I hear, but on my desk at work, I now have a desk calendar, with somewhat dorky quotes, but hey what the heck, I'll post them up. Today's is:

A gourmet is just a glutton with brains.

ookaayyyy..... Fi

That's tomorrow's one!! But here's one I liked, from last week....

"The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you are an artist"...

Anyone like to comment on that?? You're all "artists of the written word".... Fi

I love that one Fi! Good storytellers of the spoken word kind are always the best exaggerators (thatz wot I fink anyway)

Love it Fi. And the 'glutton with brains' one. I must get myself one of those profound little desk calendars.
Alyson, I loved the sound of your quote but I really didn't understand it. Could you explain how you interpret it?

...funny like a cold fart heated up in a microwave...

one of the girls at work came out with it. i didn't understand it then and i don't get it now but it's funny all the same

Lou, I wrote that one down in 1993 - so I was probably filled to the brim with teenage angst at the time - high as a kite one day and in the depths of depression over some boy the next.

But since that time, I love the idea that 'vision propells us forward', as in imagination, new ideas, new experiences, and to remember that 'despair compels us to extinction'. No point wallowing or being sad when it's just as easy to smile and laugh and be happy.

I could just as easily have said 'don't worry be happy'!

I love le Carre. Very clever, very poetic, and very simple.

Talking of ones friends have come up with, a friend of mine graduated from Uni, and another friend said:

Congraduations!

How clever is that! I will steal that one!

"When people ask me why I do this, why I write such gross stuff, I tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk". - Stephen King.

Love it! Fi

Fi, that's got to be the best quote from a writer that I've ever seen. What a guy!

I love that quote! It appeals to me sense of humour and my sense of icky stuff.

deb

Ha!

"It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you have"

Hi Karen - I like!

"I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow is not looking good either." (Dilbert's School of Thoughts)

Heheheeeee!! Fi

soppy, but cute:

Yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future. Today is a gift, that is why we call it the present.

awww Fi

soppy but true.

I have this one pinned up next to my computer (just in case I start getting delusions of grandeur):

"One must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to." Cynthia Ozick

Classic conversation stoppers:

"Yep, it's really contagious"

"So that's it. As of this morning I quit my medication. Homicidal tendancies be damned."

"You're sitting in it now."

most people probably don't like this quote but I love it any way it sticks in my mind.

'it does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live'
albus dumbledor (harry potter and the philosophers stone) .... j.k.rowling.

this quote is true to my life...

i love it!!!!!!

Taken in it's correct context, that's really true, Cassie. You can get carried away with grandious dreams and forget to write. I've got a greeting card stuck next to my computer - it's actually been next to my desk for the last eleven years - and it has a picture on it of a golf course as dawn is breaking. It says:

"Some people dream of success... while others wake up and work hard at it."

I used to look at that every morning when I came out at 4am to write. It reminded me why I was doing it.

There's some other Zen proverb too, about how even after enlightenment you go back to "chopping wood and fetching water." Even when your dreams come true, life goes on. It helps if you prepare yourself for that.

P.S. Alyson, I love the 'sitting in it' one. Very visual.

yeah ... there are plenty of good quotes around id love to have a poster off some good ones to keep me going. did you say yoiu get up at 4am to write????? i don't know that i could ever do that i am not the morining type LOL when my little brother says 'good morning' i say 'whats so good about it?' he just looks at me blankly ....LOL

.....and yes I do mean Liff.

This is a fantastic book written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd and whilst it does not have any quotes in it, per se, it is a dictionary of words for which no words exist!! It appealed to my sense of humour when I bought it for my husband about 10 years ago.

I thought I would share some gems with you......

Ardslignish - (adj.) Descriptive of the behaviour of sticky-tape when you are tired.
Bathel - (vb.) To pretend to have read the book under discussion when in fact you've only seen the Movie/TV Series.
Fiunary - (n.) The safe place you put something and forget where it was.
Lambarene - (adj.) Feeling better for having put pyjamas on.

I think that Lambarene is my fave - I love to put my jarmies on.

Karen, that book sounds like a fabulous reference for fantasy writers. All those wonderful words. "The Jabberwocky" was one of my favourite poems when I was a child and my brother and I used to make up all sorts of words. His favourite was "cootee lum lums" which meant any good looking girls he might be interested in.

Boys! My names were much better (only, I don't remember any of them now, and his sticks in my mind. Hmmm, wonder what that means)