"Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life."
-Mortimer J. Adler

"A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it."
-William Styron

"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."
-Amy Lowell

"There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?"
-Marina Tsvetaeva

"After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else."
-D. H. Lawrence

"A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators."
-Malcolm Bradbury

"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry."
-Gaston Bachelard

"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be."
-Patanjali

24 The Lord bless thee and keep thee:
25 The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
26 The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
-Numbers 6:24-26

"And sometimes there will be nothing but pain. But pain is good. If you're writhing, you're still alive. As long as you're alive, you've got a chance. It may be more remote than the fartherest star, but it's there. If you can do nothing else now, believe that. And hold on. We need you. Please hold on. The world needs you even if it doesn't know that it does. Hold on. Help is on the way."
-Manjarous

"What will be required to increase the quality of life and health is a coming together of technology and values, based on a scientific guiding principle that people can agree on. Securing a healthy global future requires this guiding principle to preserve freedom of spirit yet be as provable as the laws of physics. A guiding principle that addresses the meaning of life and is compelling enough to generate social cohesion and behaviors that serve the greater whole. After thirty years of investigation and research, it has become clear to me that the answer lies within the human heart."
-Doc Childre

"It is true that we shall not be able to reach perfection, but in our struggle toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties with which we have been gifted to the best possible account."
-Confucius

"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."
-Barbara Kingsolver

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
-Louisa May Alcott

"When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing."
-John Steinbeck

"Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death -- fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant."
-Edna Ferber

From Dragons Gather

   "What difference does it make what I believe?" I asked. "My belief or lack thereof won't put soup in the pot."
   "It makes a difference to her," Manjarous said. "Sometimes, Stefan, I think you're older than me. You walk along the edge of despair and act like it's the only path."
   "I'm Dammed!" I said harshly. "You can't understand --"
   He barked a laugh. "I'm old, and death is learning my name. Jacobi is scarred. Shellia is nightmare ridden and godstouched. Feathen has been lonely for so long that he can't live any other way. Maladora is a runaway slave. Kassler's only happy when his senses are dulled by drink. Nina and Opel can't replace their brother or heal the wounds that his passing gave them, and we're all lost in a wilderness while a wizard seeks us for gods only know what." He looked at me for a long time. "No one is free of pain, Stefan. Everyone has their failures. You're wasting your life in bitter regret. One day you will wake up as old as me and wonder where your life went."
   I didn't reply. He didn't understand about magick. How I hungered for it. How I needed it. He imagined it was something that I could put aside. I could no more make him understand than I could explain sight to someone who had been born without eyes.
   He placed a hand on my shoulder. "I'm only telling you this because I care about you, boy. Maladora is a chance for happiness. You need to allow for the possibility of change. She may have fallen for who you are now, but she's going to expect you to grow along with her. If you won't, you'll lose her as sure as dragons fly."
   He waited, but I didn't have anything to say.
   "Well, it's your life," he muttered and then went back into the wagon.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper."
-Isaac Bashevis Singer

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is
   nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just
   able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, from "The First Elegy" from Duino Elegies
translated by Stephen Mitchell

He Is Risen
Alleluia
Alleluia
Alleluia
He Is Risen

"The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice."
-Henry Knox Sherrill

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."
-Ray Bradbury

"It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause. "
-Henry Ward Beecher

"Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks."
-Dottie Walters

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
-Edith Wharton

28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
-Isaiah 40:28-31

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are,
    we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Ulysses

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
-Ernest Hemingway

Linger

I dreamed of you last night.
We laughed as we walked through
a park. Our children played
near, calling for us to
watch them slide or swing high.

I dreamed of you last night.
Your hazel eyes followed
me. A smile touched your lips.
I could not resist them.
You tasted like honey wine.

I dreamed of you last night.
Our breaths mingled as our
bodies joined. You cried my
name and shuddered as did
I. Then you turned away.

I dreamed of you last night.
I wandered through a house
empty of your presence,
footsteps echoing, air
quiet and still. No one home.

I dreamed of you last night.
I pray I don't again.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"If it is any use to you, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story."
-Ernest Hemingway