From: What My Mother Doesn't Know

Mom's The Word

My mother has never talked to me
about birth control or safe sex or about
whether I should wait till I'm married.

But whenever I'm getting ready
to go out with Dylan,
she hovers in the hall

and keeps wringing her hands,
like she's scared that
I'm going to get pregnant or something.

And if I ever did,
which of course I won't,
it would serve her right....

Sonya Sones

From: "Can't Get You Off My Mind"

"I'm old enough to see behind me,
but young enough to feel my soul."

"Can't Get You Off My Mind"
Lenny Kravitz

I am SO excited to see Lenny Kravitz as Cinna in The Hunger Games. Dude.

From: A Room With a View

"Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them."

E.M. Forster

From: "No Surrender"

"We learned more from a 3-minute record, baby, than we could ever learn in school."

Bruce Springsteen

Found: Motivation

Saw this in a headline the other day and thought of writing:

Hard Work Trumps Talent

Remember that. I'll try to remember it, too.

The article's pretty interesting if you have time to read a few words about a best-selling author who failed high school English.

Found: Nothing Worth Earning Comes Easy

"I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them."

Boris Pasternak

Thanks for the lead, DailyLiteraryQuote.com.

From: To Kill a Mockingbird

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

Harper Lee

*Keep on fightin' the good fight, bloggees. I'm a bit overwhelmed by injustice these days, but I'll be back soon with regular updates.

Reunited: It should feel good.

"Don't edit your soul according to fashion."

Franz Kafka

I recently taught one of my friends a secret trick I learned a long time ago from a magazine. When you feel like a giant failure (my friend is particularly vulnerable to people who make her feel this way), imagine yourself when you were 10 years old. Envision 10-year-old you meeting now-you. What does she think of you? Would she want to grow up to be like you?

That's how you measure success.

Why Being Told You Suck is a Good Thing

Let me tell you something true about me:

I HATE disappointing people. Yet, sometimes at work, I screw up. People come down hard on me, but no one comes down on me harder than I do. Because I hate to hear people point out things I did wrong--especially when they are choices I stopped and questioned, and then did anyway.

Maybe that's why this section of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch is loitering in my mind:

"Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn't he?" he said.

I could barely muster a "yeah."

"That's a good thing," the assistant told me.

"When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

...

You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you and want to make you better.

Remember, bloggees. People tell you your writing sucks because they believe you have the potential to do better. Prove 'em right.

Your Freudian Slip is Showing

I keep typing "write" when I mean "right." I imagine this is my creative brain giving me subtle hints. It reminds me of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, a lovely writing book that talks about a Zen approach to writing. One thing the author, Natalie Goldberg, suggests is being aware of your typos--don't just fix them; let them teach you first.

She's full of all kinds of good advice:

"Continue under all circumstances. Don't be rigid, though. If one day you have to take your kid to the dentist when it is your time to write, write in the dentist's office or don't write. Just stay in touch underneath with your commitment to this wild, silly, and wonderful writing practice. Always stay friendly toward it. It's easier to come back to a good friend than an enemy."

Are you fighting with writing? Make up. Try to remember why you two hooked up in the first place.

From: The Secret Year

"I want to call you. I just looked up your family's number. I'm pretty sure it's yours because the address is on the flats, near the Higgins Farm Bridge. Would you want me to call you? I feel so cut off from you. It seems crazy that I don't even know how you are. Sometimes I love the fact that nobody knows about us. We have this secret, so juicy I can feel my mouth dripping. Other times, like now, it seems stupid to hide this way.

It's later. I just talked to you. You didn't sound mad. Your voice felt good in my ear."

Jennifer R. Hubbard

"There will be time, there will be time"

"To lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."

John Lubbock

And Now You May Commence

"Pinocchio went out into the world filled with good intentions, with vision, he went ready to do all the things he dreamed, but Pinocchio was pulled this way and that, he was distracted, he faltered, he made mistakes, but he kept on.... Pinocchio, in the end, became himself, because the little flame inside him, no matter what crap he went through, would not be extinguished."

Patti Smith by way of UnBeige

Found on the Local Weatherperson's Blog

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression in unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost."

Martha Graham

iBooknapped

Somebody knows how to market their blog!

Someone was linking to these 10 Golden Lessons from Steve Jobs all over Linked In yesterday, so of course I had to stop in and check them out. My fave:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma--which is living the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Think about WHAT YOU WANT FOR YOURSELF today.

From: Letters to a Young Artist

"As an artist you are a student of the human condition. There is no syllabus. You can go to school and seek some structures, some techniques, some advice. Ultimately you must make your own course description, you must discover your own book list, you must make your own regimen, your own discipline. You can work as hard as you like. Or not. You can use the time or not. You can use the world--as much or as little as you like."

Anna Deavere Smith

A Favorite of Mine

"I hate writing. I love having written."

Dorothy Parker

From: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

"I had once seen Ajax, Father's best dog, get into a fight with a hummingbird and lose. The hummingbird had dived at him and spooked him until he'd trotted back to the front porch, looking very embarrassed. (It is possible for a dog to look embarrassed, you know. He'd whipped around and started licking his nether parts, a sure sign a dog is trying to hide his true feelings.)

Jacqueline Kelly

From: "The Guitar Man"

"Night after night, who treats you right?
Baby, it's the guitar man....

Then you listen to the music, and you like to sing along.
You want to get the meaning out of each and every song.
Then you find yourself a message
and some words to call your own,
and take 'em home."

Bread & Cake

From: "Hard to Make a Stand"

"We've got loud guitars and big suspicions,
great big guns and small ambitions,
and we still argue over who is God."

Sheryl Crow