The writer does not learn to write so that he can "write," but because without the necessary tools he cannot dig his way out of prison.
—Alan Swallow
The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.
—Ernest Hemingway
Envy is a con man, a tugger at your sleeve, a knocker at your door. Let me in for just a moment, it says, for just one moment of your time.… The antidote to envy is one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself. It drives the spooks away.
—Bonita Freedman
I have not failed. I have found ten thousand ways that won't work.
—Thomas Edison
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, I'll try again tomorrow.
—Mary Anne Radmacher
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
—George Bernard Shaw
There are no easy methods of learning difficult things; the method is to close your door, give out that you are not at home, and work.
—Joseph de Maistre
Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise.
—Unknown
We are asleep with compasses in our hands.
—W.S. Merwin
A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are for.
—John A. Shedd
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
—Cynthia Heimel
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.
—Rita Mae Brown
A guidance counselor who has made a fetish of security… may steer a youth away from his dream of becoming a poet, an artist, a musician, or any other of thousands of things, because… it does not pay well, there are no vacancies, it has no "future.
—Henry M. Wriston
Venus favors the bold.
—Ovid