A quote for our current time

"This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal." - Toni Morrison

video quote: Ira Glass, Creative Story Telling

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Being Present in The Room

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an excerpt from

The Talent of the Room

written by Michael Ventura

Originally published in LA Weekly, 21-27 May 1993

"The room, you see, is a dangerous place. Not in itself, but because you’re dangerous. The psyche is dangerous. Because working with words is not like working with color or sound or stone or movement. Color and sound and stone and movement are all around us, they are natural elements, they’ve always been in the universe, and those who work with them are servants of these timeless materials. But words are pure creations of the human psyche. Every single word is full of secrets, full of associations. Every word leads to another and another and another, down and down, through passages of dark and light. Every single word leads, in this way, to the same destination: your soul. Which is, in part, the soul of everyone. Every word has the capacity to start that journey. And once you’re on it, there is no knowing what will happen."

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You can read the rest of the piece over on Kelley Eskridge's site.


Thank you to Lori L. Lake for bringing this article to my attention at the Women's Writing Retreat in Rockaway Beach in October.

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Poetry Quote

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"Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that."

-  Mary Oliver               

A Writer is a Writer ... Junot Diaz Quote

This resonates with me today.

"...a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."

- Junot Diaz

[Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]

Writing, Theatre, Quotes

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I've been working with a national task force for a year on developing a standard practice paper for performance interpreting. We are now in the final edit stages. Truly. We are now at the point where the two of us who volunteered to be the final editors are sculpting and primping and turning the many pages of outlines and ideas and the eleven pages of the first draft, the second one with comments, into a concise and smooth three page document which covers the vastness that is performance interpreting.

But we have it down to very near three pages. And we are at the point of adding an introduction, in which we want to include a quote. That's how far we are in our process - trimmed, dense and accessible, and now time to add the decoration.

I sent an email to a wonderful Artistic Director I know who had a lovely quote last year about why we go to theatre, why theatre is important. I don't remember it now and I would need her permission to include it, anyway. But while I wait for her reply, I've been doing some 'net surfing to see what else I can find. I've found a few gems, although they may not fit our needs; or they may fit our needs with the addition of another quote about why interpreting performances is important.

I've now accumulated a short list of my favorite quotes (so far) and thought I'd share a few.


"Theater is life with the dull bits cut out." - Alfred Hitchcock

"An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow." - Lawrence Barrett

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. - Oscar Wilde
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Found Quote

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I ran across this quote today. I like it. Very much.

"Where the hand goes, the eye follows; where the eye goes, the mind goes; 

where the mind goes, is the heart; where the heart is, lies the reality of being."

- Bauhinia Adriana, The Mirror of the Gesture (ancient dance treatise)

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Quote from August Wilson

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"Confront the dark parts of yourself. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing."

- August Wilson

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quote

(Very odd - the quote disappeared in the posting process. Take two with fingers crossed!)

"Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train." ~ Thomas Merton

Thank you, Jessica Page Morrell for the quote at The Writing Life Too.
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Quote: If You're Serious About Writing

photo from The Memoir Writing Club

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"I believe that – if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression – that you should take on this work like a holy calling. I became a writer the way other people become monks or nuns. I made a vow to writing, very young. I became Bride-of-Writing. I was writing’s most devotional handmaiden. I built my entire life around writing. I didn’t know how else to do this. I didn’t know anyone who had ever become a writer. I had no, as they say, connections. I had no clues. I just began."

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Thank you, Jessica Morrell, for sharing this quote on The Writing Life Too.
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quote: Pema Chodron: Seeing Ourselves Clearly

SEEING OURSELVES CLEARLY

by Pema Chodron

When we begin to see clearly what we do, how we get hooked and swept away by old habits, our usual tendency is to use that as a reason to get discouraged, a reason to feel really bad about ourselves. Instead, we could realize how remarkable it is that we actually have the capacity to see ourselves honestly, and that doing this takes courage. It is moving in the direction of seeing our life as a teacher rather than as a burden. This involves, fundamentally, learning to stay present, but learning to stay with a sense of humor, learning to stay with loving-kindness toward ourselves and with the outer situation, learning to take joy in the magic ingredient of honest self-reflection.

excerpted from

Taking the Leap

Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears

By Pema Chodron 

received via email from

Heart Advice, Weekly Quotes from Pema Chodron
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Quote of the Day via Jessica Morrell

This appeared on Jessical Morrel's blog, The Writing Life Too and it is too good to not share.

"We must stay drunk on writing so reality does not destroy us."

Ray Bradbury

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Creativity Quotes

A quote showed up in my email inbox today and trying to search out its origins led me to even more quotes. So, while I planned to write something different, this seems timely. And is one of my favorite topics.


“Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” - Dianne Ackerman


“Play and silliness are as necessary to the creative individual as food and water.” Molly Anderson-Childers

"To be creative, some of what we knew as kids has to be re-learnt." Tim Brown

video from TED of Tim Brown at the Serious Play Conference in 2008

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quote for writers: "fearless"

Fearless is an interesting word, for in fact, in being fearless you are not without fear, rather you are withstanding fear. You are moving forward in spite of it. Writing a very short story requires a degree of fearlessness, and I think reading one does also. I have deep respect for the very short story for many reasons, perhaps most profoundly for its fearlessness.
--Meredith Pignon

quote for writers

Thank you, Rooze, for your discovery and for sharing!

To write experimentally is to adopt a subversive and transgressive stance to the literary, and to break up generic and linguistic norms. This formal transgression is significant because it can be a means to rethink cultural mores: for example, to shake up ideas about sexual identity, class, or race. 

by Hazel Smith, The Writing Experiment

Razor's Edge for 11/19/10

In honor of the new thread the characters in my NaNoNovel brought to light this week, today's Razor's Edge writing/creativity prompt is a YouTube video. Let yourself (or a character) take a trip to the place this band has created, watch and listen, and then write for 10 minutes about the journey. It may be the journey to get there, while you're there, or what journey is launched as a result.

As always, "journey" can be whatever it means to you: physical, emotional, spiritual.

[After the video I've also included a snippet from, and a link to, a blog post about "art saves lives" - that's a bumper sticker I had on an old car - and now there's a post with a similar title. Thanks, Emi, for your awesome post.]

VIDEO: "Year of the Knife" by Santeria








After you've done your writing (or dancing, drawing, sculpting, etc), please go read Emi's post. She has great things to say frequently, but this one is especially timely and lovely. Thanks, Emi!

... And I've come to the fairly obvious conclusion that creativity makes for a happy person. I don't care what it is, but doing something creative (that isn't illegal or immoral) is a really easy way to end up having a good hour, or day, or life, for that matter....

You can read it in its entirety at Questions, Comments, Complaints (11/18/10).
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thought: Tricycle's Daily Dharma for 9/21/10

Befriend Who You Are

Lovingkindness—maitri—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

 by Pema Chodron, "We Can Still Be Crazy" (Winter 2002)

Thanks to Tricycle for sending this thought out into the universe.

looking for a quote

I have too much to say and no time to write it and so I decided to look for a quote. About something. My only requirement in my search was that it was something *I* liked.

Then I found this one and it made me think. I decided that a thought provoking quote was even better.

"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."
Willa Cather