“…and I reminded myself that the reproach of intellectualism is often directed at the most sensitive natures, those most ardently alive, those obliged by their frailty or their excess of strength constantly to resort to the arduous disciplines of the mind.” Marguerite Yourcenar
“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.” Marguerite Yourcenar (Memoirs of Hadrian)
“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You’re stupid.” Mikail Bulgakov ( The Master and Margarita)
“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Thomas Mann
“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago I met a little girl with a book under her arm. I asked her why she was out so early and she answered that there were too many books and far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.” — Tove Jansson
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts. ~Jean Cocteau, Professional Secrets, 1922
” —It appears to me that problems— loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.” Elisabeth Bowen 1899-1973 writer
“But what is certain is that in five, ten or twenty years, this problem unique to our time, according to him, will no longer exist, it will be replaced by others…Yet this music, the sound of this rain on the windows, the great mournful creaking of the cedar tree in the garden outside, this moment, so tender, so strange in the middle of war, this will never change, not this, this is forever.” — Irène Némirovsky (Suite Française)
“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.” Isaac Bashevis Singer
Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay. Simone de Beauvoir
