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From Becca's Shelves... Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke & The Bookish.  
This week's topic is Top Ten Quotes I Loved From Books I Read In The Past Year Or So, which is absolutely perfect for me, since I have two quote notebooks BURSTING with quotes to choose from. These are all from the past year. Some are badass quotes. Some are kissy kissy ones. But they're some of my absolute

Photo by Vicky Lorencen

Now through Friday, August 15, visit Frog on a Dime and leave your favorite quote as a comment. You’ll automatically be entered into a drawing for a keen package of fun, schlock-free writing supplies, hand-picked to inspire you. Trust me. You’ll like it–I’ll have a hard time parting with it.

Now, hop to it!

Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly. ~ Langston Hughes

Freeman Dyson (b. 1923, British-born, American all round brilliant scientific person) said of scientific theories: "You sit quietly gestating them, for nine months or whatever the required time may be, and then one day they are out on their own, not belonging to you any more but to the whole community of scientists. Whatever it is that you produce, a baby, a book, or a theory, it is a piece of the magic of creation. You are producing something that you do not fully understand."

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." ~Frank Lloyd Wright
I love the quote. Plus the idea that something that puts words on a page is dangerous.

Wait. No. Of course this typewriter is dangerous. Imagine what it could do to you if it landed on your head.

I have one of them sitting in the corner of my room. My mum says she loves it and wants it because she learned to type on it. But it's too heavy to pick up let alone transport across the Atlantic. So here it stays sitting there. (But she gets to visit it.)

The other creepy thing about my ancient dangerous typewriter is: it's a typewriter that was around when Hitler was.

This is getting all too creepy. So I'm stopping now. And going back to my extremely dangerous bright green Clairefontaine notebook...

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)

There's a humility in this view point. And it seem to me to be the true one: the view of writer as the servant of the story--whose job is to discover as much as create. To listen and transcribe. The writer basically as scribe. 

It's about the story, not about you the writer.

Do you ever have the feeling that if you don't show up and get those words visible--QUICK--they might just give up on you and go somewhere else to someone who will?

That's motivation to keep showing up. Being available, there, to listen to whatever's happening that day. To whatever your characters are talking about. 

As one editor told me once "Put your characters in a room and listen to what they say."

It's like a show going on in your computer every day. Why would you want to miss that? 

Ann Lamott, author of the brilliant book, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, said: "If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."

"The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote." 
— William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)

Does the impeccable, do you think, refer to the writing as well as or the overall put-togetherness of the writer? (Mr Hazlitt looks pretty impeccable in this picture but perhaps it wasn't a writing day?) Myself, I think sometimes scruffiness could be a good sign. On the page. In person.

In schools one of the best things is to show children your most dreadfully messy first drafts. All scribbed on and scrawled out. The messier the better. To show them you don't get it right first time. Or even most of the time.

And that writing is as much about crossing out and deleting words as writing them.

An interviewer asked the poet, Annie Finch, how she would explain to a seven-year-old what a poem was, and she said:

"A poem is words that fit together in a special way so it's easy to remember and it sounds like magic."

such the perfect description of a poem.
plus, it kind of is one, too.

Annie Finch, born 1956 in New Rochelle, New York. Her newest book of poetry is Calendars (2003).

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (such the cool name) said:

"I sit down to work each morning at 9 a.m., and the muse has learnt to be on time."

 I love that. It debunks the preciousness of writing. And makes it a job. One that you just have to show up and do. Reminds me of what Philip Pullman says of writer's block:

"I don't believe in it. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?"

 Oops. It's nearly 9 AM. Time to show up at the desk.

I admit it, I love quotes. I have them splashed all over my house, inside my kitchen cupboards, on plaques, slips of paper and cut outs made of wood. Some are decorated by talented artists, some are hand written, others pulled from a magazine or typed up to preserve the message. In no particular order here are a few: (many have no author and for that I apologize)

ENTER WITH A HAPPY HEART!

FAITH ~ FAMILY ~ FRIENDS

DO NOT FOLLOW WHERE THE PATH MAY LEAD, GO INSTEAD, WHERE THERE IS NO PATH, AND LEAVE A TRAIL.

LIVE YOUR LIFE IN SUCH A WAY THAT WHEN YOUR FEET HIT THE FLOOR EACH MORNING SATAN SHUDDERS AND SAYS … “OH (insert your favorite swear word), SHE’S AWAKE!”

NEVER LET THE FEAR OF STRIKING OUT GET IN YOUR WAY.
Babe Ruth


IF YOU CAN IMAGINE IT, YOU CAN ACHIEVE IT; IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN BECOME IT. William Arthur Ward

ABOVE ALL THINGS, NEVER THINK YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH YOURSELF. Anthony Trollope


GOD LOVES EACH OF US AS IF THERE WERE ONLY ONE OF US.
St. Augustine

A DOCTOR LOOKING THROUGH AN X-RAY MACHINE TO PATIENT:
“By George, You really do have a book in you!!”

PRACTICE RANDOM KINDNESS AND SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY!

WE LIKE THAT A SENTENCE SHOULD READ AS IF ITS AUTHOR, HAD HE HELD A PLOUGH INSTEAD OF A PEN, COULD HAVE DRAWN A FURROW DEEP AND STRAIGHT TO THE END.” Henry David Thoreau

THINK POSITIVELY ABOUT YOURSELF, KEEP YOUR THOUGHTS AND YOUR ACTIONS CLEAN, ASK GOD WHO MADE YOU TO KEEP ON REMAKING YOU. Norman Vincent Peale

SOME LEADERS ARE BORN WOMEN!

EVERY SUNRISE IS A MESSAGE FROM GOD … AND EVERY SUNSET HIS SIGNATURE. William Wordsworth

YESTERDAY IS HISTORY; TOMORROW IS A MYSTERY; TODAY IS A GIFT. THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT THE PRESENT.

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU WRITE. WHAT YOU BELIEVE WILL SHOW THROUGH. Theodore Sturgeon

I GET MY EXERCISE FROM SPECTATOR SPORTS!

REAL COURAGE IS WHEN YOU KNOW YOU’RE LICKED BEFORE YOU BEGIN, BUT YOU BEGIN ANYWAY AND SEE IT THROUGH NO MATTER WHAT. Harper Lee

WE DON’T KNOW WHO WE ARE UNTIL WE SEE WHAT WE CAN DO.

IF A MAN DOES NOT KEEP PACE WITH HIS COMPANIONS, PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE HE HEARS A DIFFERENT DRUMMER. LET HIM STEP TO THE MUSIC WHICH HE HEARS, HOWEVER MEASURED OR FAR AWAY.
Henry David Thoreau

HAVE I NOT COMMANDED YOU? BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS. DO NOT BE TERRIFIED; DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED, FOR THE LORD YOUR GOD WILL BE WITH YOU WHEREVER YOU GO. Joshua 1:0

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE IMPOSSIBLE AND THE POSSIBLE, LIES IN A PERSON’S DETERMINATION. Tommy Lasorda

Share a few of your favorite quotes with us.

Til next time ~
DL Larson

Richard Condon (1915-1996), novelist best known for The Manchurian Candidate (1959) and Prizzi's Honor (1982), said: "I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It's the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what's going to happen three hours from now."

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

-John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

IN OTHER NEWS:

The Ultimate Guide To Grandmas and Grandpas has won the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award 2009. So maybe now's the time if you have anyone tiny in your family... to get hold of this invaluable handbook on how to look after your grandparents (in case you didn't know you actually need to dance for them, kiss them, hold their hands, let them eat your ice cream, and other lovely things like that...)

More here.

"If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
—Albert Einstein

Uh-oh. I sort of have an empty desk. All clear and lovely. But the clutter is off to the side. Or pushed to the back. In a neat pile of clutter. So that's alright then. I think. Is it?

"The World does not lack for wonders,
but only for wonder."

–G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

(photo: man on bike, Berlin, 1920s)

H.G. Wells said,

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

H.G. (Herbert George) Wells, born in Bromley, England (1866) got a respiratory disease in his 20s and thought he was going to die. So he left his wife, ran away with another woman, and began writing furiously.

In about five years, he wrote all the novels for which he is remembered: The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). And then he went on living and writing more science fiction and also a history of the world.

He died in 1946 at the ripe old age of 80.

Which just goes to prove something but I'm not sure quite what.

Last Spring I had the privilege of hearing Billy Collins read from his work and ever since I've been a huge fan.

In a radio interview, the former U.S. Poet Laureate talked about his art, and described the fun of writing:

"The real thrill is composition," Collins said. "To be kind of down on your hands and knees with the language at really close range in the midst of a poem that is carrying you in some direction that you can't foresee... It's that sense of ongoing discovery that makes composition really thrilling and that's the pleasure and that's why I write."

Here's a clip to give you a taste of his poetic brilliance and how funny he is and his totally dead pan delivery... (incase you weren't already familiar with him):

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) wrote,

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

And he said, "The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."

"Don't worry about avoiding temptation.
As you grow older, it will avoid you."
-- Sir Winston Churchill

"You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children."

- Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

Thank Heaven for Madeleine L'Engle and her high view of children.

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing,
moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."

--William James (b.1842) psychologist and philosopher and brother of Henry James

Despite all his success as a painter and illustrator, Edward Lear felt like an outcast in respectable British society. He wrote in his diary:

"Nothing I long for half so much as to giggle heartily and to hop on one leg ... but I dare not."

and now for something completely different... Inflationary Language--watch the clip on my Tumblr blog--and try your hand at some inflationary language of your own.

"If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not -- and the odds are against it -- go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper -- write."
J. B. Priestly


"Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day."
Norman Mailer

"The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write."
Gabriel Fielding

"I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe."

- Madeleine L'Engle

"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang best."

~ Henry Van Dyke (1852 - 1933)