Commonplace Book & Collected Quotes

“Always journey, but never consent to arrive. -- old saying quoted by Conductor Simon Rattle”

Logged 5.11.7

“The truth may set you free, but you might not be as carefree and happy. It will eat away at you — what hurts you does not necessarily make you stronger. -- David Byrne ( journal.davidbyrne.com )”

Logged 4.5.7

“New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights. -- Hamilton Wright Mabie”

Logged 1.3.7

“There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before. Each time is a new journey with no maps. -- Natalie Goldberg "Writing Down the Bones"”

Logged 12.28.6

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land. -- Jon Stewart”

Logged 11.26.6

“The unexamined life is not worth living. -- Socrates (469 - 399 BC)”

Logged 11.22.6

“Never moon a werewolf. -- Mike Binder”

Logged 11.4.6

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult. -- E.B. White”

Logged 10.30.6

“You gotta get behind the mule in the morning and plow. -- Tom Waits Mule Variations”

Logged 10.8.6

“I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life? -- Anonymous”

Logged 9.25.6

“Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tunes without the words And never stops--at all. -- Emily Dickinson”

Logged 8.27.6

“The morning breeze has secrets to tell you. Do not go back to sleep. -- Rumi”

Logged 8.22.6

“Boldness has genius, power and magic. Engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin, and the work will be completed. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”

Logged 6.20.6

“There are no uninteresting numbers. Assume that there are. Then there is a lowest uninteresting number. That would make that number very interesting. Which is a contradiction. -- Jim Loy's Theorem”

Logged 6.4.6

“Men who deserve the fate they've got always say it's sabotage...so, I won't (but it was.) -- Lyric by Austin band Cotton Mather ["The End of the Line" from Cotton is King (1994)]”

Logged 5.15.6

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win. -- William Shakespeare”

Logged 4.27.06

“No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience torpid through virtuous inaction are more to me than corner lots and praise. -- Mark Twain, "A Cat-Tale," Letters from the Earth”

Logged 4.17.06

“Your work is to discover your work -- and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. -- Buddha”

Logged 3.10.6

“The self-realizing energy that lurks in mental images has been noted for centuries and across cultures. It is the muscle that activates prayers and the inspiration behind the ancient Latin axiom Fortis imaginatio generat causum (A strong imagination begets the event itself). -- Debra Trione in A Perfect World: Words and Paintings from Over 50 of America's Most Powerful People”

Logged 1.26.6

“There, I've failed again! -- Vincent van Gogh”

Logged 1.10.6

“You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. -- Fyodor Dostoevski”

Logged 12.24.5

“I am not a designer -- designers have a social responsibility to provide solutions. Art is more about asking questions. -- Andrea Zittel, Artist”

Logged 12.4.5

“In the Wild West six-shooters were just as common as cell phones are today...and just about as annoying when they went off in the theater. -- David Carradine, host of Wild West Tech on the History Channel”

Logged 10.7.5

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their measurements and expect me to fit them. -- George Bernard Shaw”

Logged 9.9.5

“A creative block is the wall we erect to ward off the anxiety we suppose we'll experience if we sit down to work. -- Eric Maisel”

Logged 8.24.5

“T-shirt in a computer repair shop: There are 10 kinds of people in this world -- Those who understand binary and those who don't.”

Logged 6.14.5

“Camping without beer is just sleeping outside. -- T-Shirt wisdom”

Logged 4.29.05

“Hard to say -- but the best advice is often: "Abort -- start another painting." I don't feel too bad about giving this advice because I'm always giving it to myself. -- Robert Genn”

Logged 4.12.5

“Artists are by nature versatile and precise; they only repine when involved with the monotonous and the makeshift. -- Evelyn Waugh "The Loved One"”

Logged 4.5.5

“No matter what a budding artist's background, education, or point of view, he or she must ultimately go to a room and become an inventor. It is in quiet moments of struggle that both success and joy manifest themselves. -- Robert Genn”

Logged 3.25.5

“A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions (though those are its raw materials), but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline. -- Evelyn Waugh”

Logged 2.17.05

“On the marquee of a former theater in south Austin: Wreck the malls with cows on Harleys.”

Logged 1.14.5

“In 1883 Vincent van Gogh wrote: "I have walked this earth for 30 years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir."”

Logged 12.30.4

“Bumper sticker: Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?”

Logged 12.9.4

“As Richard Clarke and others have observed, every dollar, bullet and American life that we spend in Iraq is one that's not being spent in the war on terrorism. Every Iraqi, every Muslim we kill or torture or humiliate is a precious shot of adrenaline for Osama and al Qaeda. -- Hal Crowther "With Trembling Fingers"”

Logged 10.18.4

“HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED: Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals. -- Unknown”

Logged 10.2.4

“The road goes ever on and on. -- Bilbo Baggins”

Logged 8.11.4

“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence. -- Eleanor Roosevelt”

Logged 6.29.04

“The real truthfulness of all works of imagination -- sculpture, painting, and written fiction -- is so purely in the imagination that the artist never seeks to represent positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth. -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton”

Logged 5.27.4

“I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. -- Sir Winston Churchill”

Logged 5.3.4

“That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity--that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty. -- Charles Baudelaire”

Logged 4.12.4

“Ever notice that the people who are late are often much jollier than the people who have to wait for them? -- Unknown”

Logged 3.23.4

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. – Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"”

Logged 3.12.4

“Birthdays are good for you; the more you have, the longer you live. -- Author unknown”

Logged 2.17.4

“In spite of its large volume of sales, Wal-Mart's corporate contributions are small. Wal-Mart ranked last among major discount retailers, donating four-tenths of a percent of its earnings, well behind its competitors (U.S. corporations average just over one percent). A cornerstone of the company philosophy is that it "gives something back" by keeping prices low. -- http://www.pbs.org/storewars/stores2.html”

Logged 1.28.4

“Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. -- Isadora Wing in Fear of Flying by Erica Jong”

Logged 1.15.4

“The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude. -- Voltaire”

Logged 12.27.3

“For the first time in our history, American citizens have been seized by the executive branch of government and put in prison without being charged with a crime, without having the right to a trial, without being able to see a lawyer, and without even being able to contact their families. -- Al Gore, 11-9-03 Address to the American Constitution Society”

Logged 12.4.3

“When mortals wander far from home, Beauty's web may catch them as they roam. -- Goethe”

Logged 11.24.3

“Bumper sticker : Men are not pigs! Pigs are sweet, sensitive, and caring.”

Logged 10.10.3

“As artist you are both head-office and factory-floor. Project-to- project thinking is the basis of success. The project manager sees the potential, identifies the plan, understands the hazards, works out the ways and means,picks up the tools and does the job. There's only one catch. In the words of Frank Kingdon: "Make sure you want it enough." -- Robert Genn”

Logged 9.25.3

“You know what the three most exciting sounds in this world are? Anchor chains, plane engines, and train whistles. -- George Bailey (James Stewart) in It's a Wonderful Life”

Logged 9.13.3

“When you ride alone, you ride with Bin Laden. -- Bill Maher”

Logged 8.23.3

“On the Artistic Matter of Quantity = Quality: If you're cut out for it you may notice the secret miracle that's hard for some people to believe: When you push volume your imagination is stimulated, your facility increases, and your quality goes up. -- Robert Genn”

Logged 8.6.3

“Rudyard Kipling noted that if you don't get what you want, it's a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price. For artists the price is very often merely exhaustion. Our business is not capital intensive. It's creative intensive, and one does not wish, at any cost, to declare creative bankruptcy. -- Robert Genn”

Logged 7.9.3

“Painters are amongst the priests -- worker priests of the cult of man -- searching to understand but never to know. -- Brice Marden”

Logged 6.25.3

“I don't know any child that's not "at risk." -- Arturo Palacios”

Logged 5.26.3

“Chevy: It's not just a car, it's your "FREEDOM" -- Bumper sticker (in a Chevy dealer lot)”

Logged 5.18.3

“Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. -- Hermann Goering, Nuremburg 1946”

Logged 4.29.3

“Artists are horrible. "Never, never get involved with a man who wants to be an artist," my mother used to say. -- Isadora Wing in Fear of Flying by Erica Jong”

Logged 4.17.3

“If voting really made a difference, it would be illegal.”

Logged 3.15.3

“I don’t see why they just can’t put tread marks right in the cement instead of always having to get new tires! -- Lazlo Toth”

Logged 3.10.3

“You write your first draft with your heart and you rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is to write…not to think. – William Forrester (Sean Connery) in Finding Forrester”

Logged 2.25.3

“Before you criticize people, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away. And you have their shoes. -- J K Lambert”

Logged 2.3.3

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. -- Carl Bard”

Logged 1.18.3

“All you have to decide is what you're going to do with the time you are given. -- Gandalf”

Logged 12.27.2

“Confucious say: He who work on Thanksgiving Day have thankless job.”

Logged 12.5.2

“Humanity is like a big stew: if you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top. -- Edward Abbey”

Logged 11.19.2

“When I get in a pickle like this I ask myself, 'What would General Motors do?' and I do the opposite. -- Johnny Case (Cary Grant) in "Holiday" 1938”

Logged 11.12.2

“Regime change begins at home. **VOTE**”

Logged 11.6.2

“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. -- Harriet Braiker, 'The Type E Woman,' 1986”

Logged 10.23.2

“It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters. -- Stephen King”

Logged 10.4.2

“02 For this is the great secret: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new. -- Morgaine of the Faeries in Marion Zimmer Bradley's "The Mists of Avalon" 9/3/02 We weary as much of not doing the things we want to do as of doing the things we do not want to do. -- Eric Hoffer 8/15/02 You know what drives me crazy is all these people talking about how great technology is and how it saves all this time. But what good is saved time if nobody uses it? It just turns into more busy work. I mean you never hear somebody say, "Well, you know with the time that I've saved with my word processor I'm going to go to a Zen monastery and hang out." -- Jesse (Ethan Hawke) Before Sunrise 8/6/2002 She turns me on like a pickup truck. I like her better when she walks away. -- Alejandro Escovedo in "Castanets" 7/31/2 All lives have wreckage. The trick is to get the broken pieces to fit in a new way. -- Max Bickford 7/22/2 The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. -- Jack London 7/7/2 Not all those who wander are lost. -- JRR Tolkien 7/1/02 Many of us have taught ourselves techniques to throw off depression, self-defeat, dry periods, criticism. We have learned how to deal effectively with the tides of disillusionment and even despair. We are a people who build castles in the air, then live in them. -- Robert Genn 6/22/2002 Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. -- Kahlil Gibran 6/8/2002 Every day is a winding road. -- Sheryl Crow 5/24/2002 It's easy to mistake simple with lacking value. It's hard to be simple AND good. -- Paul Simon, interviewed by Terri Gross on "Fresh Air" 5/13/2002 It's a nowhere road. It just goes around in a circle. It's the carrot on the stick and the watch when you're 70. -- David Howard (Albert Brooks) in "Lost in America" 5/3/2002 What if the Hokey Pokey is what it's all about? -- Author Unknown 4/24/2002 How difficult it is to be simple. -- Vincent van Gogh 4/15/2002 I have chosen to put torments and anxieties behind me, committing myself to the transcription of the beauty of the world and the joy of painting. -- Henri Matisse 4/4/2002 My legs are asleep. Let's live here. -- David Howard (Albert Brooks) upon driving into Safford, Arizona, in "Lost in America" 3/11/2002 I'd like to know what a Trailerite is good for if it's not to help another Trailerite. -- a campground neighbor of Lucy & Desi in "The Long, Long Trailer" 2/21/2002 Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. -- Michael W. Smith 2/16/2002 I do not want what I haven't got. -- Sinead O'Connor 2/6/2002 Art isn't art until it is sold. Until then it's an obsession.... and a storage problem. -- Anonymous 1/22/02 You never know when you might need a Machete. -- Luis Casco-Arias 1/12/02 Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. All external sources of happiness and pleasure are subject to chance. -- Arthur Schopenhauer 1/3/02: The Four Stages of Life: 1. You believe in Santa Claus 2. You don't believe in Santa Claus 3. You are Santa Claus 4. You look like Santa Claus -- Author Unknown 12/26/01: The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. -- Rudyard Kipling 12/15/01: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the things you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. -- Mark Twain 12/7/01: The truth is a dangerous business to be in. -- Guy Noir 11/22/01 President Bush met the with Queen last week for the very first time. I think they hit it off. The Queen never won the popular vote, she inherited the job from her father, and they both have embarrassing relatives. -- Jay Leno 11/12/01 Painters do not paint in the same way in times of euphoria and prosperity as they do in times of tragedy and deprivation. -- Gilles Néret 10/30/01: I only started to produce something reasonable from my trip to Africa when I had begun to forget the little details and only remember the striking and poetic side in my pictures; hitherto I had been pursued by the love of accuracy which most people take for truth. -- Henri Matisse 10/19/01: It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson 10/8/01: Personally, each time I stand in front of my canvas, it seems as though I am painting for the first time. -- Henri Matisse 9/26/01 Exactitude is not truth. -- Eugène Delacroix 9/17/01: A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. -- Maya Angelou 9/14/01: Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for. -- Joseph Addison 9/4/01: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. -- David Bowie 8/23/01: Know that what you're doing wrong is your style. Wrongness is precious. Watch for it, understand it, and keep it up. -- Robert Genn Our place is just like Temptation Island, only without the temptation . . . and the island. -- from the marquee outside El Arroyo Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin, Texas Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. There is no poor subject. -- Robert Motherwell Home Available Sold Exhibitions The Artist Search Contact”

Logged 9.22.20