Happy birthday to me! I plan on spending this birthday watching the electrician and the handyman continue to do their magic on the house. Which means noise and distractions but not a lot of time to focus. So I’d like to spend my birthday here with my friends. At least until my hubby comes home and cooks me up my yummy birthday dinner.
Last year my birthday request was for garden memories. This year I’m thinking of inspiration for my writing.
Yesterday Sara Lewis Holmes shared this quote: "The real meaning of a poem is to stop time." – Ralph Fletcher (A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer within You) and I knew right away I was going to add it to my inspiration notebook. I’d love to gather up some more.
So please, help me celebrate my birthday by leaving a comment of a favorite inspirational quote that has to do with writing, poetry, or creativity.
Thank you in advance.
Well, it looks like you DID stop time, because I am just across town and I have only 11:50 PM on July 20th here!
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” ~Michelangelo
“A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.” ~Author Unknown
“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~Lewis Carroll
“There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” ~Ansel Adams
“Things are only impossible until they’re not.” ~Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
quote
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do for them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style’.
The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
– Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967), American writer and poet
Happy Birthday!!!!!
“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.” John Jakes
Happy birthday, Susan!
I started to share a Roald Dahl quote, then realized it was from YOUR site. Ha! Here are a couple more that speak to me:
“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”
—Madeleine L’Engle
“Don’t get it right, just get it written.”
—James Thurber
“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” Barbara Kingsolver
This one is rather thumpingly practical, but it encourages me on the days when I am wishing the writing elves would come in and finish things for me:
“The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it’s a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.” –Janet Frame
Happy birthday, Susan!
Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! ~Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
Happy Birthday, Susan! 🙂
Happy Birthday, my beautiful, creative friend!
happy birthday!
“Showing up every day, in a routine and regular way, no matter what else is going on and no matter what mood you find yourself in, is the central task of the creative person.” Eric Maisel
“The only thing you can’t fix is a blank page.”
-Nora Roberts
Happy Birthday!
I’m rereading BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott, and rediscovered this gem:
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – EL Doctorow
Happy birthday! Let’s celebrate together in August!
xo
I like this one. I am overwhelmed by a lot going on lately, and it inspires me!
Happy Birthday, Susan! (My mom is 86 today.)
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” ~ Robert Frost
“The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
Ever notice how beautiful and talented women with July birthdays are? Though some people think we’re crabby…
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. (Albert von Sczent-Gyorgl.
None climbs so high as he who sees not whither he is going. (attributed to Oliver Cromwell)
What’s won is done; joy’s soul likes in the doing. (Wm. Shakespeare)
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had already been dead for three years. (Tom Lehrer)
Do or do not. There is no try. (Yoda)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSAN!
“I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.” – James A. Michener
😉 Fred (Higgins)
Happy birthday!
One of my favourites:
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London
Happy birthday, Susan! Here are two of my favorites:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” –Martha Graham
“We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” –Henry James
I hope you have a wonderful and inspiring year ahead of you!
Oh, yes, and there’s this woman who says:
“There are so many stories only you can tell. Tell them, please.”
That would be YOU. And that’s one of my favorites, too.
Happy Birthday, Susan!
Here’s my favorite one for getting students to cut out the fat:
“Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” ~Mark Twain
Happy birthday Susan!
Here’s one from Edgar Allan Poe:
“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”
Happy birthday!
This is from Sylvia Plath:
“I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still.”
Happy birthday! Here are two of my favorites:
“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” ~Gene Fowler
“An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners’ names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.” ~Mignon McLaughlin
Happy Belated Birthday, Susan! Here’s wishing you good writing karma, beautiful gardens and much joy this year!
Here are two favorite quotes that I have on my sidebar:
“Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.”
-Edmund Morrison
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Happy Birthday!
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