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When I want to read a good book, I write one.- Benjamin Disraeli

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.-Richard Bach

Every accomplishment large and small begins with the same decision: I'll try.-Ted Key

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.-Robert Benchley

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.-Henry David Thoreau

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises, and you might not even be able to uncompromise yourself. If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest, not what pays.-Toni Morrison

The fear of rejection is worse than rejection itself-Nora Profit

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.-Dr. Samuel Johnson

Find a subject you care about and which in your heart you feel others should care about. It is the genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.-Kurt Vonnegut

Never forget: It doesn't matter what you write. What you believe will show through.-Elizabeth Engstrom

I wanted to tell the world just one word. Unable to do that, I became a writer.-Stanislaw Lec

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.-Ernest Hemingway

Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure-just a big field to wander in.-Natalie Goldberg

When you write from the heart, you not only light the dark path of your readers, you light your own way as well.-Marjorie Holmes

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.-Franz Kafka

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.-Erica Jong

A moment's success pays for the failure of the years.-Robert Browning

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know that I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.-John Steinbeck

Let me glimpse the face of truth. Tell me what the face of truth looks like.-Jack London

When I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between the walls and trees that are hers.-Natalia Ginsburg

When you speak, your words echo only across the room or down the hall. But when you write, your words echo down the ages.-Bud Gardner

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until little drops of blood form on your forehead.-Gene Fowler

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Opportunities are disguised by hard work, so most people don't recognize them.-Ann Landers

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.-Thornton Wilder

No horse has ever won a race it didn't enter.-Unknown

Every imaginative production must contain some element of risk.-Paul Horgan

Failure is very difficult for a writer to bear, but very few can manage the shock of early success.-Maurice Valency

A writer's life should be a tranquil life. Read a lot and go to the movies.-Mario Puzo

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.-Stanley J. Randall

From my notebook collection: (If you know who said any of these, please email me so I can give the person some credit).

Man worries ... it is our natural state.  We fear the future, are rarely content with what has passed, and dread death.

The happy person often walks, unshaken, along the path that a thousand unhappy people insist is wrong.

Think of fear as a grain of sand and joy as the highest mountain.

Happiness' path is paved wit your dreams and desires-down this path lies creativity, love, and long life.

Love turn sorrow to happiness.

The sweetest tears are the tears of happiness.

A smile can disarm many situations- love and happiness are the stronger enemies of conflict.

Happiness is always there, underneath the anger and dispair.

Happiness waits patiently, like night's desire for tomorrow.

The biggest step towards happiness is through wisdom and comes by conquering fear.  Fear breeds cruelty and superstition-an unhappy blend.

The worst enemy of happiness is fear.

Do not let fear stop you from achieving the thing that you desire.

Joy is the greatest weapon in the war against fear.

For something called "common sense," why is there so little of it around?

Yesterday, there was grief and today there is hope, tomorrow anything is possible.

The only failure is no longer trying.

Life is happiness defined in a word.

To truly gain your independence, you must realize that on this earth, we are all dependent upon each other.

A child can turn nothing at all into absolutely everything, and unhappiness into happiness.

Unite all that is you, your spirit, your heart, your body and concentrate all that you are on the happiness you want.

Don't worry about your entire future-it can only arrive one day at a time.

Be true to your inner self.  Like a tree, stand fast against good fortune or bad.  Neither fair weather nor foul can shake it.

Happiness costs nothing and is worth so much.

At the end of our lifetimes, we know nothing- in youth, we know everything.

There are two kinds of truths.  There is the truth that is acceptable to you, and the truth that is acceptable to liars.

A man may leave behind him his works-therein lies his talent.  But he takes with him his life-therein lies his genius.

The optimist turns problems into opportunities.  The pessimists turns opportunities into problems.

Optimism is the ability to perceive evil only where it exists.

The happy man does not hear the clock strike.

Wisdom is knowing when to be silent.

Be honest with yourself, if you cannot accept yourself as you, how can you expect others to?

One of the rarest things to be discovered in life is truth.

There is birth and there is death, two acts to a complex play called life and between them is an interval which should be enjoyed.

The greatest happiness is to allow your heart to become as pure and simple as a child's again.

Next time you stare into the heavens wondering whether there is life elsewhere in the universe, ponder the possibility of your life on earth.

Life is a riddle that we must learn to enjoy solving.

The world of childhood is so intense-try and recapture some of that urgency for living.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.-E.W. Wilcox

Pessimism is saying all's well when all is going badly-herein lies unhappiness. Optimism turns the same moments around by recognizing that all will be well after things have been going badly-herein lies happiness.

To life well requires the exercise of practical wisdom-moderation, justice, and courage-to balance pleasures against pains to accept, when necessary, those pains that lead to greater pleasures.

Happiness does not grow in the garden of angry thoughts.

"There's a light at the end of the tunnel," says the optimist. "It's probably a train coming straight at us," responds the pessimist.

A tree is happy to be a tree even though is has never sat in its own shade.  A spoon is happy to be a spoon even though it does not know the taste of soup.

You do not have to go forward, you can go sideways or upward- just do not go backward.

The gardener who was happy to plant the tree he would never see grown provided the shade that keeps us comfortable.

Tell me and I will listen,
Show me and I will understand.
Involve me and I will learn.

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