"Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all" --HELEN KELLER

P.T. Barnum said, "Without promotion something
terrible happens, NOTHING!"

Language is where being dwells.

"If there is something you believe you can do or dream you can do, begin it. There is magic in boldness."-- Goethe

"A good traveller has no fixed plan and is not intent on arriving" --  Lao Tsu.

"Poets treat their experiences shamelessly: they exploit them" -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore,
I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world." -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear."  -- Mark Twain

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" -- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

"With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture.
The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow." --William Faulkner

"I felt time in full stream, and I felt consciousness in full stream joining it, like the rivers."
-- Annie Dillard, An American Childhood, 1987.

"When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry."    -- Audre Lorde

"To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession."   -- Robert Graves

"The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness."  --Christopher Morley

"A writer's job is to say the things that other people only think.
That takes guts. Soldiers have to be brave. So do policemen, firemen, miners, constructions workers on high-rise buildings, and test pilots.
Perhaps the bravest are the men and women who fly into outer space.
Writers who do really good writing learn to see things with the fresh innocence of visitors from outer space.
Their bravest journeys take place when they fly into inner space, the unexplored or unproclaimed recesses, the hiding places where our secrets are stored."
-- Sol Stein

"The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes, lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells,
a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices,
one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory."
-- Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1948.

"Modern man thinks he loses something -- time -- when he does not do things quickly;
yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains -- except kill it."
-- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, 1956.

"To me, the creative process is a VERY emotional one, it not only brings out very strong emotions, but relies on them to a certain extent. The agony and the ecstasy may sound contrived , but it is very real to me. As I mentioned in my story, when I was young, the best music I created occurred when I was in a very black mood. I have at least gotten past that requirement, thank God. But even now, I must reach at least a certain level of intensity (of desire) in order to be creatively successful. Emotion is a key element in that, and I find my work lacking a certain edge if I do not attain significant emotional commitment in the process. Agonizing over the result eventually brings out the best creative solution, but only if I fight hard enough for it, and immerse myself enough in it. The process sometimes can be horribly painful, but I find it to be the only way to achieve results that have real impact.

"On the other hand, sometimes even when I reach results that are incredibly satisfying and significant to me, clients or critics are unable to appreciate them. At first, that aspect was very troubling to me. In the end, one has to reach a point of self-confidence with the value of one's creative efforts and realize that not everyone who looks at them is capable of appreciating their worth. Getting to that point can also be difficult.

"Creativity, by it's very nature is a lonely process. I had a friend, an artist, who used to come by my place every few days in order to break out from the extreme isolation of his work, and commiserate with someone who had similar experiences wrestling with the creative process. He eventually moved to LA, and is now the creative director of [film studio] there.

"We both were (and continue to be) committed to our desire to create. In our discussions we both agreed, the capacity to dwell on things incessantly turns out to be very valuable, even though it is often painful. Neither of us would trade that aspect of our personalities for anything, as it is what drove us to strive for a better creative result. At the same time, it becomes absolutely necessary to evolve ways to avoid being totally consumed by the process itself."

- James C. Amsdell II, Architect, Musician

"I was 27 when I made my first dance," he says, "and suddenly I was hooked. I've never wanted to do anything else since." -- French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj.

"Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation." (Works of imitation -- art). -- Aristotle, "Poetics" Chapter 4.

The process of converting experience into words -- the medium of artistic expression. Writing. There is no life without the process.

Writing gives meaning to experience.
The writer is compelled to observe life in greater detail, to seek greater depth of knowledge on the subject.
To cease to write, is to cease to exist on a meaningful level.
Writing connects the soul with the earthly world.
-- a state of flow between thought and experience.
Writing is the exercise that helps to transport the mind between flat and flow. March 20, 1997, Paris / October 2, 1997 Boston

"I paint what I know is there." -- Pablo Picasso

Flow: (a psychological term)
"Picasso spent most of his life in flow standing at his easel with a paint brush in his hands. Anyone who has ever focused on something so absorbing that time appears suspended knows what it's like to be in flow.
It has been defined as being completely centered, and is often described as being fully alive. Science has proven that endorphins play a major role in this somewhat altered state by releasing a morphine like substance into the body in such abundance that pleasure subdues all thoughts of pain or discomfort."

"The painter is able to intensify our experiences, find new relationships among objects, new forms, and new colors, ... show us things in our environment which we overlooked or ignored ... make the world about us become alive, rich, beautiful, and exciting."

Artists paint to discover truth and to create order

Confronting being alone:
"In general, people don't want to sit down with themselves because there is too much about themselves that they don't like."
-- January 19, 1995 from a conversation with a friend, PhD psychology.

People can be uncomfortable when others cry.
A friend once said, when crying, that they were, "not doing well."
When out to sea alone and upset, I called home, by radio, and remember the panic that others felt when I conveyed that I was crying or upset.
They thought I was not doing very well when, in fact, I was exceeding all previous levels.

Even if someone has been to the place you are describing, show it to them in a new way to bring out the special qualities in a way not previously expressed. January 9, 1995

"If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home."
-- James A. Michener, in William Safire and Leonard Safire, Good Advice, 1982.

A neighbor, on writing:
recommends spending time with the great minds of history, most of which can be found in the library.
Also, he said, " you can read of some one's adventure, but ... so what? It needs a soul." It needs to be a part of the reader. The reader needs to find himself in the work or find that the writing so greatly transcends the daily life that it brings him / her along. August 24, 1994 journal.

To know the dimensions of space, to imagine the intricacies of another's experiences ... to know and understand the experiences (thoughts, feelings) of another... as an exploration of self ... myth. They cannot recognize it, if they do not know it themselves.

Communication requires effort on the part of the reader and the writer.

At a class reunion in lieu of posing the typical ice breaker, "so what are you doing?" or "what have you been up to," I asked people, to "tell me a story." This approach was taken to hopefully get to know something of the person, as opposed to receiving prefabricated replies about their method of acquiring money. Garbage collectors describing themselves as sanitary engineers. Let's be real. My approach attempts to bring out interesting, unusual, potentially revealing replies, or else it would, very rapidly reveal that the person has nothing to say at this time and you can seek others for conversation.

In a circle of people, I turned to an acquaintance, who I had not seen for ten years and said, "tell me a story." She described beads and how she likes to make things with them, the things she makes, the way they feel in her hands as she is working with them, how they make her feel. A very sexy reply, indeed.

The entire world of experience becomes assimilated in the work.
To isolate yourself amongst the beautiful is certainly okay, but visitations amongst the grime of mortality must not be omitted lest you do the reader a disservice.

"Life portrayed to bring a tear to the eye, not to avert the eye. Our world needs to be woven together with compassion."

"An individual who has a specific talent but does not care to apply effort to it will probably accomplish little."

"We have a ... collective agreement to be in control. We create a picture of what the world is like. We all know it's not anything like that, but in order to keep ourselves calm and secure we maintain that picture. There is something about the wildness of passion. You know that feeling, when you're going out into the country and you have a moment of panic ... and you have to change gears and maybe feel a bit of the fear to get past it?"

" ... there is also a lovely unity ... to our conflicted yearnings for both security and passion."

Caring and ambition are proper emotions that can help support ability and provide the drive toward excellence.

"A writer must knock readers down. This is the goal he must constantly have in mind: to make people listen, to catch their attention, to find ways to make them hold still while he says what he so passionately wants to say. Although creative writing as an intellectual exercise may be pursued with profit by anyone, writing as a profession is not a job for amateurs, dilettantes, part-time thinkers, 25-watt feelers, the lazy, the insensitive, or the imitative. It is for the creative, and creativity implies both talent and hard work."

"To make a novel you need a passion ... a situation charged with love, hate, ambition, longing--some tension that cries to be resolved."

"To distill the essence of what is seen, to create an abstraction of its qualities."

"It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself."
-- Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963.

"I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred."
-- Thomas A. Edison, Golden Book, April, 1931.

"A man in the house is worth two in the street."
-- Mae West, Belle of the Nineties, 1934.

"I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down.
That's the thing about girls.
Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are."
-- J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye, 1951.

"Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self."
-- Harriet Goldhor Lerner, The Dance of Anger, 1985.

"The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity.
It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency."
-- Bette Davis, The Lonely Life, 1962.