14 Quotes for a New Monday Morning

For most, our two biggest influences are the people we meet and the books we read. Interestingly, I've always felt that the books we read are just the same as meeting people, except we encounter them in another form. Ideas, expressed in words, are inexplicably powerful as they are transmitted from mind to mind.

There is no direct relationship between the various quotes on this page, other than that they spoke strongly enough that I wrote them down. Each stands alone, though some pair nicely with others as well, adding insights by casting new light from a different angle.

"Once you label me you negate me."
--Kierkegaard

"Fiction makes you think; propaganda tells you how to think."
--Amy Tan, from the chapter "required reading and other dangerous subjects" in her book The Opposite of Fate

"I can't imagine being a writer and having others dictate to me what I should write, why I should write, and whom I should write for. And this is the reason I consider myself an American writer: I have the freedom to write whatever I want. I claim that freedom."
--Amy Tan, ibid.

"We live in an era in which appearances seem more important than reality."
--Gordon Marino, The Existentialist's Survival Guide

“I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”
--Herman Hesse, Demian

“If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.”
― Amy Tan

"It is a mistake to intend to write only very important things in a journal. That is not its justification."
-- Andre Gide

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
--Howard Thurman

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."
~-John F. Kennedy

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."
--Pablo Picasso

"Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone."
--G.B. Stern

"I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious."
--Albert Einstein

"Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us."
-- Wilma Rudolph, Olympic Sprinter

"Your life is what you see in front of you."
--Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

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And now, it is time to make your mark.