M.D. Flyn > M.D.'s Quotes

“Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“All because he had tried to rescue a beautiful, vacuous girl from a dragon. In folklore, such a hero always received a most intriguing reward. In reality, the hero was as likely as not to find himself in need of rescue…”
― Piers Anthony, A Spell for Chameleon

“The theory of universal gravitation is not cast-iron. No theory is, and there is always room for improvement. Isn't that so? Science is constructed out of approximations that gradually approach the truth. . . Well, that means all theories are subject to constant testing and modification, doesn't it? And if it eventually turns out that they're not quite close enough to the truth, they need to be replaced by something that's closer. Right?”
― Isaac Asimov, Nightfall

“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”
― Jane Austen

“Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.”
― Lauren Bacall, By Myself and Then Some

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
― Yogi Berra

“Fire is bright and fire is clean. That way lies melancholy. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Stuff your eyes with wonder," he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that," he said, "shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Have you ever seen the atom bomb mushroom from two hundred miles up? It's a pinprick. It's nothing. With the wilderness all around it. My grandfather ran off the V-2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that someday our cities would open up and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, someday it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been the first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we're got on damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we'll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember every generation.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Magic and art arise from an egomaniac's insistence that the artist is right, and the universe wrong.”
― David Brin, Brightness Reef

“Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., Life's Little Instruction Book

“Smile at me, baby, and I'll walk on hot coals for you, no matter how many times you wake me up in the middle of the night.”
― Shannon Brownlee

“There is never a better measure of what a person is, than what he does when he's absolutely free to choose.”
― William H Bugler

“That's what it means to be married. You fight all the time, but you never fight about what you think you're fighting about.”
― Orson Scott Card, Hatrack River

“Acceptance on someone else's terms is worse than rejection.”
― Mary Cassatt

“We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”
― Luciano De Crescenzo

“I know this, that if I had the luck, or maybe the misfortune," said Dick with a melancholy smile, "to have the woman, it would not be this way with me! - and what in the wide world is a man without a wife? He's no more surely than a bottle without a drop of drink in it, or dancing without music, the left leg of a scissors, or a fishing line without a hook, or any other matter that is in no ways complete.”
― T. Crofton Croker

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
― Ram Dass

“There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit, when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never been.”
― Charles Dickens

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
― Pablo Picasso

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun”
― Pablo Picasso

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Drawing and painting is like a quickie in bed. Were as novel writing is a long term relationship, much more fulling.”
― Tara Dobbs

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Write as much as you can.
As fast as you can.
Finish your shit.
Hit your deadlines.
Try very hard not to suck.”
― Chuck Wendig

“Writers are made--forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities--over the course of many, many moons. The writer you are when you begin is not the same as the writer you become.”
― Chuck Wendig, 250 Things You Should Know About Writing

“Stories are like wine; they need time. So take the time. This isn’t a hot dog eating contest. You’re not being judged on how much you write but rather, how well you do it. Sure, there’s a balance — you have to be generative, have to be swimming forward lest you sink like a stone and find remora fish mating inside your rectum. But generation and creativity should not come at the cost of quality. Give your stories and your career the time and patience it needs.”
― Chuck Wendig