Letter Asking For Funeral Funds Quotes & Sayings

I spent nine hard, exasperating, concentrated months on the first chapter of Liars' Club alone, which was essentially time developing that voice - a watchmaker's minuscule efforts, noodling with syntax and diction. Were I to add on the time I spent trying to recount that book's events in poetry and a novel, I could argue that concocting that mode of speech actually occupied some thirteen years (seventeen, if you count the requisite years in therapy getting the nerve up). What was I doing during those nine months? Mostly I just shoved words around the page. I'd get up at four or five when my son was asleep, then work. I'd try telling something one way, then another. If a paragraph seemed half decent, I'd cut it out and tape it to the wall. — Mary Karr

When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. — Rob Pike

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow. — Ambrose Bierce

An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings. — Charlton Laird

Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way. — Ray Dalio

Like the wheeling of stars,' muttered the Count as he paced.
"That is how time passes when one is left waiting unaccountably. The hours become interminable. The minutes relentless. And the seconds? Why, not only does every last one of them demand its moment on the stage, it insists upon making a soliloquy full of weighty pauses and artful hesitations and then leaps into an encore at the slightest hint of applause. — Amor Towles

I did not think I should be ever loved: do you indeed
Love me so much as now you say you do?
Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea,
Ask of the roses if they love the rain,
Ask of the little lark, that will not sing
Till day break, if it loves to see the day:
And yet, these are but empty images,
Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire
So great that all the waters of the main
Can not avail to quench it. — Oscar Wilde

It is June 27, 1912. You are lying in your bed in the Grand Hotel and it is 6 p.m. on the evening of June 27, 1912. Your mind accepts this absolutely. 6 p.m. on June 27, 1912. Elise McKenna is in this hotel at this very moment. Her manager, William Fawcett Robinson, is in this hotel at this very moment. Now, this moment, here. Both in the Grand Hotel on this evening of June 27, 1912. 6 p.m. on June 27, 1912. Elise McKenna, now, in this hotel. She and her company are in this hotel at this very moment. Now on June 27, 1912, 6 p.m. Your mind accepts this, absolutely. You have traveled back in time, soon you will open your eyes. You will walk into the corridor, and you will go downstairs and you will find Elise McKenna, who is in this hotel at this very moment. — Richard Matheson

In painting, the key is not taking myself seriously to the point where it kills sincerity. — Scott Avett

The purpose of such propaganda phrases as "war on terrorism" and attacking "those who hate freedom" is to paralyze individual thought as well as to condition people to act as one mass, as when President Bush attempted to end debate on Iraq by claiming that the American people were of one voice. The modern war president removes the individual nature of those who live in it by forcing us into a uniform state where the complexities of those we fight are erased. The enemy-terrorism, Iraq, Bin Laden, Hussein-becomes one threatening category, something to be defeated and destroyed, so that the public response will be one of reaction to fear and threat rather than creatively and independently thinking for oneself. Our best hope for overcoming perpetual thinking about war and perpetual fear about both real and imagined threats is to question our leaders and their use of empty slogans that offer little rationale, explanation or historical context. — Nancy Snow

Walk my way and a thousand violins begin to play, or it might be the sound of your hello. — Johnny Mathis

Hollywood is the gold cap on a tooth that should have been pulled out years ago. — W.C. Fields