Confessions of a Quote Addict
By Julie Rowe
I love quotes. I’ve been acquiring books of quotes for a few years now and doubt I’ll ever tire of it, because I’ve found great insight and wisdom in some of the most unexpected phrases spoken by some of the most unexpected of people.
But why is that important?
It’s important because writing is, by its very nature, a solitary business. No one can make us write when obstacles appear in the way, when time is short or when we grow weary. The strength to continue comes solely from within. But when I read a good quote, like the ones below, I know I’m not alone, that others have dealt with the same insecurities, the same fears and the same problems.
I’m in good company.
My all time favourite quote is attributed to retired Brigadier General Chuck Yeager. What would a military man and Air-force test pilot have to say that could inspire a writer? Lots. Because the courage required to finish a difficult job, be that writing a book or flying an experimental plane, is the same. Both require focus, commitment and faith in ourselves…
You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done. – Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager.
Along with Gen. Yeager’s quote, I have three others posted on the wall above my computer:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle.
Only those that risk going to far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T.S. Eliot.
This thing we call failure is not the falling down; it’s the staying down. – Mary Pickford.
All three keep telling me to keep writing, to never give up, to continually strive to write better and better.
When the going gets tough, the tough get writing…
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London.
Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run. – Rudyard Kipling.
Wake up with a smile and go after life…live it, enjoy it, taste it, smell it, feel it. – Joe Knapp.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shockproof shit-detector. – Ernest Hemingway.
Don’t ever write a novel unless is hurts like a hot turd coming out. – Charles Bukowski.
For me, writing something down is the only road out. – Anne Tyler.
My recipe for life is not being afraid of myself, afraid of what I think or of my opinions. – Eartha Kitt.
I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth. – Pearl S. Buck.
You have to surrender to the act of writing, give up to it, and trust that if you have anything, it will discover it for you. – E.L. Doctorow.
All the resources we need are in the mind. – Theodore Roosevelt.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm. – Audrey Hepburn.
Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery or triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory. - Gandhi
Manuscripts that sell are written with words that speak to the reader, touch them emotionally and leave them with something undefinable, but powerful…
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt by the heart. - Helen Keller.
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming WOW! WHAT A RIDE.
- Unknown.
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. – Maya Angelou.
Each of us makes a difference. It is from numberless acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. – John F. Kennedy.
I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard. – William Lloyd Garrison.
There is no one right way to write, and don’t let anyone tell you different…
There’s no right way of writing. There’s only your way. – Milton Lomask.
You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream of things that never were; and I say, “Why not?” – George Bernard Shaw.
When you sit down to write, tell the truth from one moment to the next and see where it takes you. – David Mamet.
Best advice on writing I’ve ever received: Finish. – Peter Mayle.
Best advice on writing I’ve ever received: Don’t answer the phone. – Patsy Garlan.
Don’t think then write it down. Think on paper. – Harry Kemelman.
There is nothing at all to writing; all you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. – Red smith.
The best rule for writing – as well as for speaking – is to use always the simplest words to convey your thought. – David Lambuth.
Either it sounds right or it doesn’t sound right. – Isaac Asimov.
The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. – Henry David Thoreau.
One of the great rules of art: do not linger. – Andre Gide.
Don’t get it right, get it written. – James Thurber.
We will either find a way, or make one! – Hannibal.
Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make…they make them for their own protection, and to hell with them. – William Saroyan.
Never belittle the value of writing. Creating a new written work is a huge deal, and starting a new manuscript, no matter how many you’ve already written, takes courage. Just as it would take courage to step off cliff while wearing a blindfold…
Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, ”and go on till you come to the end; then stop. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. – Erica Jong.
Take that first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step. – Martin Luther King Jr.
Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. – Calvin Coolidge.
Start by doing what is necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. – St. Francis of Assisi.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Action conquers fear. – Peter Nivio Zarlenga.
A journey of a thousand miles begins and ends with one step. – Lao-Tsu.
Satisfaction comes from action. If you look up the origin of the word ‘satisfaction’ you will find that it comes from two Latin words--satis, which means ‘enough’ and facere, which means ‘to make’. Facere is also the root of the words ‘factory’ and ‘manufacture’. So enough making--or enough action--is what produces satisfaction. – Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen – excerpted from “Chicken Soup for the Soul, Living Your Dreams”.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau
Every accomplishment large and small begins with the same decision: I’ll try. – Ted Key
Go! Go! Go! It makes no difference where just so you go! Go! Go! Remember at the first opportunity--go! – Jeanette Rankin.
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. – Richard Bach.
Before you begin a thing remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead… You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin. – Kathleen Norris.
The distance is nothing, it is only the first step that is difficult. – Madam du Deffand.
If my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type faster. – Isaac Asimov.
Victory is not won in miles but in inches. – Louis L’amour
According to the theory of aerodynamics, the bumble bee is unable to fly. This is because the size, weight and shape of its body in relation to its total wing span makes flying impossible. But the bumble bee, being ignorant of these scientific truths, goes ahead and flies anyway. – Unknown.
Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. – Louis Pasteur.
Making a mistake, error or doing it wrong has always been an issue for me. What I forgot is that some of the most useful and successful things ever invented came into the world as the result of a mistake…
Mistakes and errors are the discipline through which we advance. – Channing.
It is often failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings and new forms of expression. – Eric Hoffer.
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated. – Paul Anderson.
Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, since every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true. – John Keats.
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. – Edward Phelps.
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. – Igor Stravinsky.
This thing we call failure is not the falling down; it’s the staying down. – Mary Pickford.
Inside of a ring or out, ain’t nothing wrong with going down. It’s staying down that’s wrong.” – Muhammad Ali.
How do you know what you’re writing is any good? You don’t. It’s not your job to know that. Your job is to write…
Type. Your job is to get it on paper. Ours is to decide if it’s any good. Just keep typing. – Robert Gottlieb (literary agent).
If there is no dull determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement. – Hsun-tzu.
Write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well. – Agatha Christie.
If you work out with weights for fifteen minutes a day over a course of 10 years, you're gonna get muscles. If you write for an hour and a half a day for 10 years, you're gonna turn into a good writer. - Stephen King, ON WRITING.
The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. “Finish your first draft and then we’ll talk,” he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix. – Dominick Dunne.
Writers are courageous people. We labor in isolation to produce something that is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s how we string those parts, or words, together that transforms what we’ve created into a novel that will entertain, comfort and inspire others.
I salute you all.
Here's a blurb from the book
Since her divorce, Willa Hayes has thrown
herself into her work as a nurse practitioner
in the remote town of Stony Creek, Alaska.
She's regained her self-confidence and her
heart is almost healed. Then her newfound
peace is shaken by the arrival of sexy
flyboy Liam Reynolds. Willa can't deny
she's instantly, intensely attracted to him—
even if she's convinced he's yet another Mr.
Wrong.
Liam has his own reasons for fleeing to the
isolation of the north, and a relationship is
the last thing he wants. He wasn't counting
on being drawn to the pretty nurse who
accompanies patients on his flights to
southern hospitals.
Fortunately, the temptation—and the desire
to avoid anything serious—is mutual. So
the pair comes up with an arrangement: sensual, steamy, no-strings fun. But when
things heat up on a cold Alaskan night, the rules of the game may change forever...
About the author
Julie Rowe’s first career as a medical lab
technologist in Canada took her to the
North West Territories and northern
Alberta, where she still resides. She loves
to include medical details in her romance
novels, but admits she’ll never be able to
write about all her medical experiences
because, “No one would believe them!”
A double Golden Heart finalist 2006, Julie
has two books out with Carina Press:
ICEBOUND and NORTH OF
HEARTBREAK. Her writing has also
appeared in several magazines such as
Today’s Parent, Reader’s Digest (Canada), and Canadian Living. She currently
facilitates communication workshops for her local city college. You can reach her
at www.julieroweauthor.com or on Twitter @julieroweauthor .
Purchase links:
Amazon- http://amzn.to/zSrqOW
B&N- http://bit.ly/zAuLQT
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