Following on from my last post, Writing as a Way of Retribution,
I began this year with the concept of archiving an inspiring quote every day
and sticking it on my wall. However, I slowly felt less and less in need of
this comfort and on 18th March I stopped. This post is an online
chronicle of that process and a memento for years to come.
01/01/2014 ‘To see the world, things dangerous to
come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel.
That
is the purpose to life.’
-
Life magazine motto (as seen in The Secret Life
of Walter Mitty)
02/01/2014 ‘Writing a book is like telling a joke
and having to wait two years to know whether or not it was funny.’
-
Alain de Botton
03/01/2014 ‘If
I hit myself and it hurts… am I weak or strong?’
-
Anonymous
04/01/2014 ‘Sit
down. You have your whole life to waste’
-
Anonymous
05/01/2014 ‘Time
is precious. Waste it wisely’
-
Anonymous
06/01/2014 ‘Life
is about using the whole box of crayons’
-
Anonymous
07/01/2014 ‘For what it’s worth: It’s never too
late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and
if you find that you’re not, I hope you have to strength to start over.’
-
F. Scott Fitzgerald
08/01/2014 ‘Make sure your characters are worth
spending ten hours with. That’s how long it takes to read a book.’
-
Po Bronson
09/01/2014 ‘Love
makes your soul crawl out from its hiding space’
-
Zora Neale Hurston
10/01/2014 ‘Our
greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.’
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson
11/01/2014 ‘People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them
feel.’
-
Maya Angelou
12/01/2014 ‘I wish there was a way to know you’re
in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.’
-
Andy Bernard (as said in the Office U.S.A)
13/01/2014 ‘The most painful thing is losing
yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are
special too.’
-
Ernest Hemingway
14/01/2014
‘Just ‘cause you got the monkey
off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.’
-
George Carlin
15/01/2014 ‘That
belongs in a museum!’
-
Indiana Jones (as said in The Last Crusade)
16/01/2014 ‘Better to write for yourself and have
no public, than to write for the public and have no self.’
-
Cyril Connolly
17/01/2014 ‘There
is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.’
-
Ernest Hemingway
18/01/2014 ‘When
I saw you I fell in love and you smiled because you knew.’
-
William Shakespeare
19/01/2014 ‘When you’re trying to create a career
as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.’
-
Michael Lewis
20/01/2014 ‘No matter how much you think you love
somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.’
-
Chuck Palahniuk
21/01/2014 ‘You know Hunter typed The Great
Gatsby? He’d look at each page Fitzgerald wrote, and he copied it. The entire
book. And more than once. Because he wanted to know what it felt like to write
a masterpiece. He was so hungry, yeah. Innocent, and yearning.’
-
Johnny Depp on Hunter S. Thompson
22/01/2014 ‘We
all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that
will.’
-
Chuck Palahniuk
23/01/2014 ‘Never say goodbye, because saying
goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.’
-
Peter Pan
24/01/2014
‘In the end, what you do isn’t
nearly as interesting or important as who you do it with.’
-
John Green
25/01/2014 ‘Editors
are writers’ councillors.’
-
Andrew Wright (Golden Egg Academy, Scholastic)
26/01/2014 ‘No man ever steps in the same river
twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.’
-
Heraclitus
27/01/2014 ‘Writing is something you do alone.
It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to
make eye contact while doing it.’
-
John Green
28/01/2014 ‘Fiction is experimentation; when it
ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction. One never puts down a sentence
without the feeling that it has never been put down in such a way.’
-
John Cheever
29/01/2014 ‘In our lives, on average, we will be
asleep for a total of 8,477 days. If we’re lucky, some of that time will be
sleeping next to someone we love.’
-
Zefrank
30/01/2014
‘Fairy tales are more than true;
not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that
dragons can be beaten.’
-
G. K. Chesterton
31/01/2014 ‘If
you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’
-
African Proverb
01/02/2014 ‘Spend your energy supporting what you
believe in, rather than hating what you don’t.’
-
Joshua Heath
02/02/2014 ‘Creating
something is all about problem-solving.’
-
Philip Seymour Hoffman (R.I.P)
03/02/2014 ‘The only thing standing between you
and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you
can’t achieve it.’
-
Jordan Belfort
04/02/2014 ‘The
book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.’
-
Rolan Barthes
FORTUNE –
When you speak honestly and openly, others truly listen to you.
05/02/2014 ‘I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start
counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that’s when I start
counting, because that’s when it really counts.’
-
Mohammed Ali
FORTUNE
– Even a small gift could mean so much to someone today.
06/02/2014 ‘Forget,
“I can’t,” and instead say “I currently struggle with…”’
-
Tony Horton
07/02/2014
‘I hate when people say, “Nice to
meet you” before I’ve even said anything – How do you know it’s nice to meet
me?! I’m an asshole!’
-
Jack Nicholson
08/02/2014 ‘Every man’s life ends the same way. It
is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man
from another.’
-
Ernest Hemingway
FORTUNE
– Opportunity is always ahead if you look and think.’
09/02/2014 ‘I’m not good at future planning. I
don’t plan at all. I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I don’t have a day
planner and I don’t have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the
past, not in the future.’
-
Heath Ledger
10/02/2014 ‘Maybe our favourite quotations say
more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.’
-
John Green
11/02/2014 ‘I always wonder why birds stay in the
same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth. Then I ask myself the same
question.’
-
Harun Yahya
12/02/2014 ‘Wear
the old coat, but the new book.’
-
Austin Phelps
13/02/2014 ‘Some
people feel the rain. Others just get wet.’
-
Bob Marely
14/02/2014 ‘If you would not be forgotten as soon
as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.’
-
Benjamin Franklin
15/02/2014 ‘I never considered myself a lucky
person. I’m the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.’
-
Christopher Nolan
16/02/2014 ‘Listen,
smile, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway.’
-
Robert Downey Jr.
17/02/2014 ‘If your actions inspire others to
dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.’
-
John Quincy Adams
18/02/2014 ‘The need to write comes from the need
to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.’
-
John Cheever
19/02/2014 ‘Quiet
people have the loudest minds.’
-
Stephen Hawking
20/02/2014 ‘…’
-
Silent Bob (as seen in Clerks)
21/02/2014 ‘I think anybody who falls in love is a
freak. It’s a crazy thing to do. It’s kind of like a form of socially
acceptable insanity.’
-
Amy (as said in her)
22/02/2014 ‘Writing
is about leaving a question a reader can answer.’
-
Imogen Cooper (Golden Egg Academy, The
Lighthouse)
23/02/2014 ‘There are a lot of things I wish I
would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a
boring life.’
-
Kurt Cobain
24/02/2014 ‘Raise
your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.’
-
Rumi
25/02/2014 ‘I like art, and by art I mean music,
poetry, sex, paintings, the human body, literature… all of this is art to me.’
-
Hunter Reveur
26/02/2014 ‘The
unfed mind devours itself.’
-
Gore Vidal
27/02/2014 ‘Writing a novel is like heading out
over the open sea in a small boat. It helps if you had a plan and a course laid
out.’
-
John Gardner
28/02/2014 ‘Whatever
you do, tell the truth.’
-
Grover Cleveland
01/03/2014 ‘Everything
not saved will be lost.’
-
Nintendo “Quit screen”
02/03/2014 ‘The
best way out is always through.’
-
Robert Frost
03/03/2014 ‘Little
by little, a little becomes a lot.’
-
Tanzanian Proverb
04/03/2014 ‘Long-term
consistency trumps short term intensity.’
-
Bruce Lee
05/03/2014 ‘What’s
my guilty pleasure? The thing is, I never feel guilty about my pleasures.’
-
Tom Hiddleston
06/03/2014 ‘Any
time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of shit.’
-
David Mament
07/03/2014 ‘The fear of death follows the fear of
life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.’
-
Mark Twain
08/03/2014 ‘Happiness
is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.’
-
Margaret Lee Runbeck
09/03/2014 ‘Sometimes
you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.’
-
Dr. Seuss
10/03/2014 ‘Rock
bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.’
-
J.K. Rowling
11/03/2014 ‘The
invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.’
-
Paul Virilio
12/03/2014 ‘I’m
not making any money doing this, I’m purely doing it out of ego.’
-
Paul Tracy
13/03/2014 ‘Courage
is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.’
-
Mark Twain
14/03/2014 ‘I’m
not a paranoid deranged millionaire. Goddamit, I’m a billionaire.’
-
Howard Hughes
15/03/2014 ‘We’re born alone, we live alone, we
die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for
the moment that we’re not alone.’
-
Orson Welles
16/03/2014 ‘Alright, I have an admittedly insane
idea, but if I don’t ask you this it’s just, uh, you know, it’s gonna haunt me
the rest of my life.’
-
Jesse (as said in Before Sunrise)
17/03/2014 ‘There are three things men can do with
women; love them, suffer for them or turn them into literature… I’ve had my
share of success and failure at all three.’
-
Stephen Stills
18/03/2014 ‘Remember, you don’t need a certain
number of friends, just a number of friends you can be certain of.’
-
Anonymous
