Lopate Writing Quotes & Sayings

Now more than ever God's people must be committed to being gospel centered. Jesus can no longer be out there somewhere on the horizon as we look to culture, religion, politics, spirituality, or morality for our true north. — Mark Driscoll

Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city. — Jerry Pournelle

English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England. — Matt Groening

Not every lost soul is a lost cause — M. Alice LeGrow

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
- Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library — Phillip Lopate

Ruta Skadi was four hundred and sixteen years old, with all the pride and knowledge of an adult witch queen. She was wiser by far than any short-lived human, but she had not the slightest idea of how like a child she seemed beside these ancient beings. Nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling.
But they expected nothing else: she was very young. — Philip Pullman

If you're a writer, the problem is that, when you try to call a halt to thinking about your novel-in-progress, your imagination still keeps going; you can't shut it off. — John Irving

Doubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side. Whether writing essays or just going about daily life, I am constantly second-guessing myself. My mind is filled with 'yes, buts,' 'so whats?' and other skeptical rejoinders. I am forever monitoring myself for traces of folly, insensitivity, arrogance, false humility, cruelty, stupidity, immaturity and, guess what, I keep finding examples. Age has not made me wiser, except maybe in retrospect. — Phillip Lopate

[Richard Crossley's] previous bird guide, for ID'ing Eastern birds, is the most imaginative, original attempt to re-envision the birding guide and set his approach apart from that of Sibley, Kaufman, Peterson, Nat'l Geo, and the other bibles in the field. — James Wolcott

I can catch demons but people cry when I do that. And then I'm blamed for trying to control them. How convenient that the excuse of someone trapped in hell is that I'm manipulating her into getting out of it. That's how they see help, as an attack that must be defended at all cost. They can't see that their soul is in the hands of Satan already. He is the one instigating their fears and anger, as if they were just a puppet. They can't see that I pay a very heavy emotional, mental and physical price, every time I try to rescue one of the trapped souls, every time I love someone that doesn't know what love is anymore. — Robin Sacredfire

What makes me want to keep reading a nonfiction text is the encounter with a surprising, well-stocked mind as it takes on the challenge of the next sentence, paragraph, — Phillip Lopate

The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one's curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present world. — Phillip Lopate

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art; Annie Dillard and Cort Conley, eds., Modern American Memoirs; Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory; Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life; Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay; Jane Taylor McDonnell, Living to Tell the Tale: A Guide to Writing Memoir; and William Zinsser, ed., Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. — Vivian Gornick

Because creative people aren't always in charge. And when they do their best work, they're hardly ever in charge. They're just sort of rolling along with their eyes shut, yelling Wheeeee. — Stephen King

But it had gotten so boring, all that crying and wanting and needing. This year she'd realized that she'd never be like her mom, and the realization had freed her. She stopped trying to get good grades and make good friends, and do everything well. She had flourished in her rebellion, reveled in it. — Kristin Hannah