Writing Quotes

Can anyone indentify this plant?


Thanks to each of you for your kind and encouraging words. Pottermom, I appreciated your perspective on change and clay. Becky (bless her) sent me this inspiring quote as a comment to my last blog post. The comments on seasons and patience were cool water to my parched roots.

"The creation of genuine art demands conscious struggle, formal inventiveness, and reckless courage.We make out of quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. The creative artist must be open to an unknown power that fills him. S/he must be able to draw strength from a source s/he doesn't understand or know." W. B. Yeats. Interesting that the sermon this morning at church was on how the power--the unlimited far-reaching power of God fills believers.

Yeats encouraged me to dig out a few of my own favorite writing and creative quotes. The Jack London quote always makes me smile.

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." Jack London

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit." Richard Bach. Substitute the word artist, potter, designer, jewelry-maker, gardener for writer if you wish. The thought holds.

"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to popular belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young." William Somerset Maugham

"Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential." Jessamyn West

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud. Emile Zola

It's tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in January. But, as any creative person will tell you, there are days when there's absolutely nothing sweeter than creating something from nothing. Richard Krzemien

Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty. Rosemary Mahoney

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Thomas Mann

A final and great favorite...Imagination is more important than knowledge. Albert Einstein

Just when I wondered if I would ever write or create anything at all again, (I'm not kidding, creative depression can be quite dramatic.) I woke up yesterday morning with a haunting, poignant short story in my head. Or at least sketchy glimpses of it. I'm going on a creative retreat in a few days. It is glorious to know I'll be diving into a project from the start.