J.A. Burton > J.A.'s Quotes

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
― Nelson Mandela

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”
― kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.”
― Billy Collins

“The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.”
― Billy Collins

“all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World

“If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.”
― Sherman Alexie