Category Archives: Quotes

A sense of enjoyment

When I write I make a conscious effort to generate a sense of enjoyment–to convey to my readers that I found the events I’m describing more than ordinarily interesting, or unusual, or amusing, or emotional, or bizarre. Otherwise why bother to describe them? I also try to convey the idea that I was feeling great when I did my writing–which I almost never was; writing well is hard work. But readers have a right to believe that you were having a good time taking them on your chosen voyage.

—William Zinsser

So Rainy!

[N]o one needs to watch the news every night, unless one is married to the anchor. Otherwise, you are mostly going to learn more than you need to know about where the local fires are, and how rainy it has been: so rainy! That is half an hour, a few days a week, I tell my students. You could commit to writing one page a night, which, over a year, is most of a book.

—Anne Lamott

Once you set the pace, the rest will follow

To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed—and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.

—Haruki Murakami
in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2008, p. 5)

So I have this thing where I’ll see/hear Someone Who is More Well-Known than Me (which is to say, pretty much everyone) doing or saying something that I’ve been doing or saying for eons, and I’ll be “Wait, what? I said/did that First!” Sometimes I think I’m secretly an innovator—except I never realize what I’m doing/saying is bleeding edge until someone else scoops me. (This is why I will never be rich ;-)) Or maybe this is a common thing. Let me know.

Anyhow. Please note the date on my article, “Starting Will Always Be Hard: What Running Taught Me About Writing.”

Probably the most important thing that running has taught me is that no matter how long you’ve done something and how much you love it, starting will always be hard. Start anyway. If you don’t, you’ll never get to experience that moment when everything clicks and you’re sailing: your feet are flying across the pavement or your fingers are smoking over the keyboard. And afterward, when you’re done? Well, that feeling is sheer euphoria.

Genius Inhabits You

[Genius] comes in flashes and then leaves, because you don’t possess genius—not even if you happen to be declared one. Instead genius inhabits you, enables you, fills you. I think the creative world would be better off by far—perhaps less selfish and competitive—if we embrace a concept of genius that envisions it as free-floating and collective, rather than bound up in the individual. Genius is something that strikes us, something we occasionally tap into unaware. We should be more concerned with this timeless, incomprehensible force that inhabits writers than with the accolades we use the genius word to bestow.

—Steven Wingate

Spin

I could have said that I am stepping down to spend more time with my children (which I truly want to do). Or that I am leaving to pursue other opportunities (which I also truly want to do). But I have never had much tolerance for others’ spin, so I can’t imagine trying to stomach my own. The simple fact is that not enough people watch my program.

—Campbell Brown

Apparently Campbell Brown is being applauded for Stating the Obvious.  Which, on the one hand, seems ridiculous, and on the other hand, is yes, refreshing (since it’s so rare). So isn’t it that startling honesty that’s appealing, not her “failure,” as the linked article seems to indicate?

[B]y admitting, in essence, to failure, she pulled off something quite magnificent: She appealed to those of us who have failed at one time or another. That is to say, she appealed to all of us[.]

—Meghan Daum

[btw: Google tells me that the phrase “failure is the new success” made its first appearance in 1999.]

The center-place of your experiences

There are three happiness killers – doing work you do not love and are not passionate about, surrounding yourself with people who you do not really like (someone who just fills time), and living somewhere that does not let you be you. Just stop it. Life is far too short. … your place, community or neighborhood is so important – it is not just where you live. It is the center-piece or should I say center-place of your experiences.

—Richard Florida