Quotes to contempate & inspire

Victor Hugo:

"It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life."
"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."
"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

"One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation."

Dorothy Parker:

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more."

E. M. Forster:
"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us."

Logan Echolls, Veronica Mars:
"I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me. Spanning years, continents. Lives ruined. Bloodshed. EPIC."

Ocsar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian Gray:
"Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible; to be great is to be misunderstood."

W. B. Yeats:
"Think where man's glory most begins and ends and say--my glory was that I had such friends."

Lester Bangs, Almost Famous:
"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."

The Simpsons:
“A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
(It’s a perfectly cromulant word.)”

And finally, to sum up:
"I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things." (Dorothy Parker again)

Words to work by

When I am stuck on one project, I remember a line from a conference: “What else are you working on?” Picture books are so easy and so hard to write and the stack of impersonal rejections is staggering. If I put all my hopes and dreams on the Magic Dragonfly and she flits from one slush pile to the next for several years (decades?) waiting will be an exercise in frustration. I get enough exercise! So I keep tweaking Victor Javalina and Danny Lion and Tuk-tuk the Lemming. More than that I keep asking myself: what else am I working on? This week is was the Bush Dancers in the Outback! Tomorrow – what else?