Category: Quotes

It Doesn’t Matter

21st March 2021
Quotes
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Ivy and stone stairs at Millesgården, Stockholm (Sweden). Photo by Mihaela Limberea

Whatever you think matters—doesn’t. Follow this rule, and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late, or early; if you are here, or if you are there; if you said it, or did not say it; if you were clever, or if you were stupid; if you are having a bad hair day, or a no hair day; if your boss looks at you cockeyed; if your girlfriend or boyfriend looks at you cockeyed; if you are cockeyed; if you don’t get that promotion, or prize, or house, or if you do. It doesn’t matter.

Roger Rosenblatt (b. 1940), American memoirist, essayist, and novelist.

Compassion Is Largely a Quality of the Imagination

14th March 2021
Quotes
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Close up of a lotus flower to illustrate compassion. Photo by Mihaela Limberea.

Compassion is largely a quality of the imagination: it consists of the ability to imagine what we would feel if we were suffering the same situation. It has always seemed to me that people without compassion lack a literary imagination— the capacity great novels give us for putting ourselves in another’s place—and are incapable of seeing that life has many twists and turns and that at any given moment we could find ourselves in someone else’s shoes: suffering pain, poverty, oppression, injustice or torture.

– Héctor Abad Faciolince, from Oblivion: A Memoir.

To read more quotes, click here.

Any New Beginning Is Forged From The Shards Of The Past

30th December 2020
New YearQuotes
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Winter landscape in Winterthur, Switzerland. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

Any new beginning is forged from the shards of the past, not from the abandonment of the past.

Craig D. Lounsbrough
Rose hips covered in snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

Neil Gaiman

Tree branches covered in snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.

Benjamin Franklin
Trees covered in snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

With the new year comes a refueled motivation to improve on the past one.

Gretchen Bleiler
Trees covered in snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art—write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Neil Gaiman
Winter town panorama . Photo by Mihaela Limberea

May Light always surround you;

Hope kindle and rebound you.

May your Hurts turn to Healing;

Your Heart embrace Feeling.

May Wounds become Wisdom;

Every Kindness a Prism.

May Laughter infect you;

Your Passion resurrect you.

May Goodness inspire

your Deepest Desires.

Through all that you Reach For,

May your arms Never Tire.

D’Simone

I Wonder If the Snow Loves the Trees and Fields

23rd December 2020
Quotes
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Tree branches covered in snow. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again”.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898), pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was an English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist, especially remembered for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) & Through the Looking-Glass (1871). 

To read more quotes by various authors, click here.

In The Midst Of Winter

11th December 2020
Quotes
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Close up of a tree in winter illustrating a quote by Albert Camus. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Winter in Winterthur, Switzerland.

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)

Albert Camus was a French writer and philosopher who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.

To read more quotes by various authors, click here.

Just Squander Yourself

5th December 2020
QuotesWriting
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Waves crashing on the beach. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Waves crashing on the beach, Fregate Island, Seychelles.

The task is always to write every single piece like it’s your only one. It has to have that energy. Use your best material now. Just squander yourself. Enjoy it. I don’t want to read anyone’s tepid writing.

Parul Sehgal 

The quote comes from this excellent interview with Parul Sehgal, book critic at The New York Times, and former editor and columnist at The New York Times Book Review.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard, along the same lines.

An End-Of-The-World Book At Night

25th November 2020
BooksQuotes
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Welcome to Las Vegas Nevada-sign at night. Photo by Guido Coppa on Unsplash used to illustrate an end-of-the-world mood.
Photo by Guido Coppa on Unsplash

Vegas always carried with it an eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-may-die energy: a city perched on the cusp of a never-ending yet never-quite-happening end. It was a city permanently stuck in the predawn hour before the hangover truly hit. Right there at the Rubicon, still having fun and about to start puking, on the line between everything is amazing and the End Times are here.

Chuck Wendig, Wanderers

I’m reading Wanderers, by accident, really. I mean, I wasn’t looking for an end-of-the-world-book about a pandemic wiping out humanity (and 775 pages long at that) while we’re surfing Wave 2 of the real thing. Things happen, though, you know. Let’s call it the butterfly effect of reading.

Wendig is no Stephen King (The Stand is still the measure for end-of-the-world books), but it’s an OK read if you’re willing to put up with all the preaching. I’m researching my first non-fiction book * and I needed an easy read at the end of the day.

I usually read for pleasure somewhere between 7 pm and 10 pm (I only watch TV Fridays and Saturdays, it’s the only way to get anything done and have time to read). After reading non-fiction books and taking notes all day, I’m in the mood for some easy stuff in the evenings.

Speaking of notes-taking: this Zettelkasten method for taking notes changed my life. I’m so happy that I found it exactly when I was about to start my research. Well, I was actually looking for a better method, but this is revolutionary indeed. I’ll post a review once I’ve used it for a while. I have many books to read as part of my research, so it’ll be perfect to use Zettelkasten and see what it does for me. Hint: Zettelkasten means paper slip in German.

* I don’t want to talk about it yet, sorry! I’m still afraid I’ll jinx it.

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Keep Creating Art

11th November 2020
ArtQuotes
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Picture of artist Yayoi Kusama as a mannequin standing in her artwork. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Yayoi Kusama. My photo from the In Infinity exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockhom, 2012.

I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art.

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Net (2011)

A seven minutes video that is an excellent introduction to Kusama’s life and work.

Said A Blade Of Grass

16th October 2020
Quotes
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Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, ”You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams!”

Said the leaf indignant, ”Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again – and she was a blade of grass.

And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, ”O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”

Kahlil Gibran (1883- 1931)

Through Shadows To The Edge Of Night

20th September 2020
PoetryQuotes
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A dark forest
In a dark, dark forest. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

Home is behind, the world ahead,

And there are many paths to tread

Through shadows to the edge of night,

Until the stars are all alight.

Then world behind and home ahead,

We’ll wander back and home to bed.

Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,

Away shall fade! Away shall fade!

J.R.R. Tolkien, A Walking Song from The Fellowship of the Ring