Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration. —Rudolf Nureyev

The adventure of composition is a mystery. The Muse has her ways, she hides from you, comes for you in the middle of the night, at midday, at dawn. You must believe wholeheartedly in this divine power. It's an elusive gift that can appear at any time, anywhere. Artists are in awe of it. —Mickey Hart

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. —Claude Monet

Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where you backbone ought to be. —Clementine Paddleford

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. —Kurt Vonnegut

Goethe said, 'Talent is developed in privacy, ' you know? And it's really true. There is a need for aloneness which I don't think most people realize for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. —Marilyn Monroe

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. —Woodrow T. Wilson

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor. —Thomas Jefferson

Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. —Bill Gates

In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing. —Mignon McLaughlin

What [causes] the greater part of the world's quarrels? Simply this: Two minds meet and do not understand each other in time enough to prevent any shock of surprise at the conduct of either party. —John Keats

Delay is preferable to error. --Thomas Jefferson

In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the other really likes. --Elizabeth Ashley

...love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And loves dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure.
—"Under Pressure,"
David Bowie & Queen

Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. —Father Larry Lorenzoni

The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning. —Lewis Thomas

Leaving a legacy is about so much more than just your own family. —David Trotter

A smiling face is half the meal. —Latvian Proverb

If it's truly a family reunion, there isn't a selection process. That was decided a long time ago, so you have to invite everybody. —Edith Wagner

In cities no one is quiet but many are lonely; in the country, people are quiet but few are lonely. —Geoffrey Fisher

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. —Life's Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge. —Brooks Atkinson

It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane. —Charles Lindbergh

There is no security quite as comfortable and undemanding as the kind you feel among old friends. —Peter Bodo

You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature. —William Rotsler

Satan's first attack on man was to make him doubt God's kind intent. —Dr. Marilyn Birch

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. —Mother Theresa

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. —Aesop

...In the good providence of God, apparent failure often proves a blessing. —Robert E. Lee

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people. —Kin Hubbard

One of the signs of true repentance is a gracious acceptance of the consequences. —Marcia (me)

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare. —G. K. Chesterton

The gift of the family novelist is to turn the cleaning of a closet into an inventory of love and loss-to scan a poem from a shopping list. —Marilyn Gardner

Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism. —Philip Yancey

Vision without action is Hallucination. —Don Clifton

Nothing is too wonderful to be true. --Michael Faraday

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Scrubbing and cleaning can wait 'til tomorrow,
For babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep,
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.
—Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal. —Bill Cosby

Kindness is the oil that takes the friction out of life. —Author Unknown

The man and woman who can laugh at their love, who can kiss with smiles, and embrace with chuckles, will outlast in mutual affection, all the throat-lumpy, cow-eyed, couples of their acquaintance. Nothing lives on so fresh and evergreen as the love with a funnybone. —George Jean Nathan

God is who He says He is
God can do what He says He can do
I am who God says I am
I can do all things through Christ
God's Word is alive and active in me
I believe God!
—Beth Moore

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. —Kahlil Gibran

Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning. —Thomas Alva Edison

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. —Tom Clancy

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. — Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. — Thomas Mann

Here's to matrimony, the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented! —Heinrich Heine

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes. — Mahatma Gandhi

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. —E. L. Doctorow

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. —Victor Hugo

GONNA BE BUSY....

I'll be too busy to post for the next few days, so here's (almost) a week's worth. Make it last.... Don't make pigs of yourselves!

I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people happy;they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance and the like. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor. —Martin Luther

Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw. —Fran Lebowitz

The grass is always greener...where you water it. —Author Unknown

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants. —Jessamyn West

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. —Edith Wharton

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. —Irish Proverb

If your project doesn't work, look for the part that you didn't think was important. —Arthur Bloch

However well organized the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks. —Havelock Ellis

There's no place like home, except Grandma's. —Author Unknown

When you have completed 95 percent of your journey, you are only halfway there. —Japanese Proverb

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. --George Orwell

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money. —Susan Heller

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. —Mark Twain

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stands a broader mark* for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure, too. —Benjamin Franklin

*broader mark = larger target, a reference from dueling

Graduation—>Commencement—>Beginning

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. —T.S. Eliot

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is! —Anne Frank

Watching your daughter leaving with her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla. —Jim Bishop

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't. —Richard Bach

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength. —Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman. —Jonathan Swift

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes. —Amos Bronson Alcott (Louisa May Alcott's father)

Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals. —Unknown

When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure. —Peter Marshall

He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. —St. Francis of Assisi

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. —Jane Howard

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. —Erma Bombeck

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. —Ralph Nichols

When you travel, you experience,...the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations...and on most journeys you don't even understand the language...you are like a child just out of the womb. You begin to attach...more importance to the things around you because your survival depends on them. You begin to be more accessible to others because they may...help you...you accept any small favor...with great delight, as if...you would remember [it] for the rest of your life. —Paulo Coelho

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity. —James Thurber

An ethical person ought to do more than he's required to do and less than he's allowed to do. —Author Unknown

After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life. —Evelyn Underhill

I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure. —Author Unknown

There is a strength of a quiet endurance as significant of courage as the most daring feats of prowess. —Henry Tuckerman

Not all those who wander are lost. —J.R.R. Tolkien

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. —George Bernard Shaw

But Christ has been raised to life! And he makes us certain that others will also be raised to life. —The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:20

Choices are the hinges of destiny. —Edwin Markham

There are moments in your life when you really miss someone, that you want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real. Hope you dream of that someone. — Author Unknown

Maybe surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
Oh I miss you, you know
—from "Home",
performed by Michael Buble

Those who are in the Lord never say goodbye for the last time. —Scottish Proverb

Kissing is like drinking salted water: you drink and your thirst increases. --Chinese Proverb

Much of the distress we experience as Christians comes not as the result of sin, but because we are ignorant of the laws of our own nature. For instance, the only test we should use to determine whether or not to allow a particular emotion to run its course in our lives is to examine what the final outcome of that emotion will be. Think it through to its logical conclusion, and if the outcome is something that God would condemn, put a stop to it immediately. —Oswald Chambers

Do caterpillars know they are going to be butterflies, or does God surprise them? — Bil Keane, Family Circus

A Blast From the Past

Got a quote today--a long one! Last night, I suddenly remembered this classic poem that my dad used to read to me when I was a kid. He wasn't real demonstrative when I was growing up, (He got better!) but there was never any doubt what he was saying when he read this to me.

-------------------------------

The Children's Hour
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day's occupations,

That is known as the Children's Hour.



I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

And voices soft and sweet.



From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.



A whisper, and then a silence:

Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

To take me by surprise.



A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

They enter my castle wall!



They climb up into my turret

O'er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

They seem to be everywhere.



They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!



Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old mustache as I am

Is not a match for you all!



I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

In the round-tower of my heart.



And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

And moulder in dust away!

--------------------------------

I love you too, Daddy!

The longer I live, the more faith I have in Providence, and the less faith in my interpretation of Providence. -- Jeremiah Day

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.--Sam Levenson

Our wedding was many years ago. The celebration continues to this day. -- Gene Perret

Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy. -- Eskimo Proverb