As many of you know, especially if you read my book Fearless Writing for Women: Extreme Encouragement and Writing Inspiration (published Dec/2013), I love to collect quotes, and that book is absolutely full of my favorites. Since then, I’ve started a new list of my favorite quotes and keep 
adding to the list.
These favorite quotes are about creativity, books, writing and some are simply quotes about life, and are as varied as my interests. I’m convinced that a timely, well-written quote can propel us out of the doldrums and into a more hopeful and positive direction. Yes, they may even encourage and inspire. With that in mind, here’s my latest offering to you:
You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes. –A.A. Milne
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall. –Roald Dahl
We bring ourselves with all our aspirations and wounds, affinities and aversion, insights and confusions to the books we read, and our experience shapes our responses. –Wendy W. Fairey
“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.” — C. JoyBell C. (Thanks to my friend, Becky, for sending me this one.)
Books are the carriers of civilization…They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print. –Barbara W. Tuchman
People do not change, they are merely revealed. –Anne Enright
Do you have a favorite?
If you have any quotes you’d like to add to this post, please do so in the comments section, or email them to me personally and I’ll add them. In the meantime, may the winds carry you. xo
—–
P.S. In case you haven’t heard, my latest novel, Temple Secrets, is now available.
I saw one on the side of a bookbag the other day: I find television very educational. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. –Groucho Marx
Oh, I love that one! I wonder what Groucho would think of all the screens we have in front of us today? He probably wouldn’t be that impressed.
Well, keep in mind that Groucho had his own TV show, the hypocrite, and was one of the first celebrities to embrace that new medium called television, just as 30 years earlier he was one of the first to embrace the medium of the then-new high-tech medium of movies.
…Just as I’ve been told W.C. Fields really liked Philadelphia and Jack Benny was actually very generous.
Thanks for this update, John.
Persona and paradox. Two of the more interesting “P” words. Yes?
When I posted this on the Books and Writers group on Linked-In, here are some of the responses I got:
Sam: My favorite literary quotation: “We are always shocked by our friends’ choices in literature and lovers.” I remember reading this insightful quotation 20 years ago; however, I cannot recall its creator. It may have been someone in the Bloomsbury Group.
Me: That’s a good one, Sam!
Acapella Book Cover Design: I’ve always liked this one from Mark Twain, “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.†– Jennifer
Lyn: The one I remember from school is “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.â€
― Winston S. Churchill (and it stuck with me because it is all too true for many politicians / world leaders -especially the dictators who CAN control that…)
Howard: One I came across recently I found amusing. “Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.â€
Me: Good ones!
David: “We read to know we’re not alone.†― William Nicholson, Shadowlands
There are more good quotes at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/reading
The one from Shadowlands I specifically remember from seeing the film about C.S. Lewis.
Another favourite of mine: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.â€
― Joseph Brodsky
Karen: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
–Ernest Hemingway.
Although we should probably replace “typewriter” with “computer.” But far be it for me to edit Hemingway.
Brenda: “Write from the soul. Not from the notion of what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal.” -J.A. Carver