Dinty W. Moore Quotes & Sayings

What are minnows but brief flashes? And what are thoughts? And how do you capture a brief flash, even for a second? — Dinty W. Moore

But if we don't prefer things, then we increase our chances to be content. — Dinty W. Moore

Exercise the muscles that compassionately open the heart.
In your writing and your life. — Dinty W. Moore

Not all writing is political or revolutionary, but the very act of giving yourself permission to write, to speak, to share the truth no matter whether the truth you understand is the truth others want to acknowledge, is brave, powerful, and important. — Dinty W. Moore

Those are serious questions. Let me avoid them as best I can. — Dinty W. Moore

Kaethe Schwehn's poignant memoir explores longing, both spiritual and physical, community and faith, in prose that is calm, lovely, and filled with clear-eyed honesty and grace. Tailings is simply an exquisite book. — Dinty W. Moore

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. - THOMAS PAINE — Dinty W. Moore

The difference between a story and an essay is that the storyteller just wants to entertain the reader, while the essayist has been to graduate school. — Dinty W. Moore

The idea that students don't know how to write clearly and precisely is as old as school itself, probably, but lately it seems as if students no longer know how to read either. It is true on my campus and from I can gather, on many other college campuses. The students understand words, sentences
they are not illiterate
but they don't seem to grasp the reasons for reading. They seem baffled when asked to take two thoughts, connect them, and form something new. They read James Baldwin or Henry David Thoreau and their primary reaction seems to be, "Okay, now I've ready that. I'm done." As if the only goal in reading was to have looked at every word. — Dinty W. Moore

Cars, with their air conditioning, windows, sound systems, and great speed, keep us isolated from our environment ...
"Self-propulsion," such as biking, walking, canoeing, puts us in touch with the land below and the world around us. — Dinty W. Moore

Floyd Skloot's Revertigo is a beautifully-written, moving account of one man's off kilter life. Who would have imaged a memoir exploring months of extreme vertigo and decades of neurological turbulence would be filled with so much joy and optimism? This gentle, wise, and perceptive memoir never fails to surprise. — Dinty W. Moore

Jim Grimsley's unflinching self-examination of his own boyhood racial prejudices during the era of school desegregation is one of the most compelling memoirs of recent years. Vivid, precise, and utterly honest, How I Shed My Skin is a time-machine of sorts, a reminder that our past is every bit as complex as our present, and that broad cultural changes are often intimate, personal, and idiosyncratic. — Dinty W. Moore

We are rushing, always thinking of the future, of our destination, focusing on what is four hours, or four hundred miles, or four years ahead, and constantly missing what is right there, just then, at the moment. — Dinty W. Moore

Memory is like a rope, knotted every three or four feet, and hanging down a deep well. When you pull it up, just about anything might be attached to those knots. But you'll never know what's there if you don't pull. And the more you pull at that rope, the more you find. — Dinty W. Moore

Words will never fully capture what is alive in our hearts.
It would be a shame, though, if we denied our bears their dancing. — Dinty W. Moore