Writers

"Writers collect things. We read magazines, we ride buses and eavesdrop on other people's conversations, we stop and read posters on telephone poles, we examine soup cans and old clothing stores and babies and pets and sewer covers and weather reports. We delve into ancient history, old gossip, rumors, hints of rumors, maps, brochures, irrelevant details, bad advice, good omens, lucky stars, and things that are nobody's business. In short, we are called to be witnesses. Things may happen, but unless someone takes note of it, it might not matter."

"“But you really are, you know.” This was said with intense earnestness. “I mean good, really good. I think it is wonderful to be an author like you. It must be almost like being God.” Graham stared blankly. “Not to editors, sister.” Sister didn’t get the whisper. She continued, “To be able to create living characters out of nothing; to unfold souls to all the world; to put thoughts into words; to build pictures and create worlds. I have often thought that an author was the most gloriously gifted person in all creation. Better an inspired author starving in a garret than a king upon his throne. Don’t you think so?” “Definitely,” lied Graham."

"Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can."

"There is probably no hell for authors in the next world — they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this."

"And force them, though it was in spite Of Nature and their stars, to write."

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think."

"But every fool describes, in these bright days, His wondrous journey to some foreign court, And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise,— Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport."

"And hold up to the sun my little taper."

"All I knew then was what I couldn't do. All I knew then was what I wasn't, and it took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer. By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper."

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. (9 December 1852)"

"Les sots font le texte, et les hommes d'esprit les commentaires."

"I like the idea of a literary patchwork, novel by novel, poem by poem, by different writers, mapping out an era, 'a continent' more and more thoroughly. No one writer can do it."

"There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured."

"But I did not explain to you the other insidious aspect of writing. There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary...because it hurts less to write than it does not to write."

"Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, sequam Viribus."

"Tantum series juncturaque pollet."

"Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons."

"Nonumque prematur in annum."

"There are two things which I am confident I can do very well; one is an introduction to any literary work, stating what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most perfect manner."

"A man may write at any time if he set himself doggedly to it."

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

"Later on in life you will learn that writers are merely open, helpless texts with no real understanding of what they have written and therefore must half-believe anything and everything that is said of them. You, however, have not yet reached this stage of literary criticism."

"It is the rust we value, not the gold; Authors, like coins, grow dear, as they grow old."

"I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts."

""Tis hard to say if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill; But, of the two less dang'rous is th' offence To tire our patience than mislead our sense."

"Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment too?"

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance."

"In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend."

"I hold to my old romantic belief that writers of all times and places belong to a noble fellowship; that although they are the voices of their own cultures and languages, they transcend these boundaries."

"what is writing if not a form of confession in disguise? No matter what the subject, all literary roads lead back to the self. The writer descends like a miner into the deepest shafts of her soul in order to unearth the blackest coals of her torment, or to retrieve the most glittering diamonds of her memories, and bring them back to the surface in the form of fictions that she wishes to share with the world."

"In an age when many people lived on less than two dollars a day, his income rose to as much as a hundred thousand dollars a year. He was the highest paid writer in America, and it was widely reported that his magazine contributions could earn a dollar a word. In fact, his last contract with Harper & Brothers guaranteed him only a third of that, but it was still a better deal than anyone else could have expected, and he always insisted on a strict word count from his editors, even going so far as to demand that hyphenated words be counted as two. Legend has it that when an admirer enclosed a dollar with a request for his autograph, he replied not with his signature but with the single word "Thanks," in accordance with his rumored rate."

"Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic."

"As was the case in the 1950s, the 1970s, and now in 2024, writers sometimes exist in perilous times, balancing careers between the tick and tock of the Right and the Left, when a single misstep or perceived endorsement can be a terminal mistake."

"Writers are engineers of human souls."

"Authors—essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part, Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of art."

"In every author let us distinguish the man from his works."

"I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how writers should serve."

"But you're our partic'lar author, you're our patron an' our friend, You're the poet of the cuss-word an' the swear."

"This dull product of a scoffer's pen."

"Ideas are free. But while the author confines them to his study, they are like birds in a cage, which none but he can have a right to let fly : for till he thinks proper to emancipate them, they are under his own dominion."

"The invention of an author is a species of property unknown to the common law of England. Its usages are immemorial; and the views of it tend to the benefit and advantage of the public with respect to the necessaries of life, and not to the improvement and graces of mind."

"Some write, confin'd by physic; some, by debt; Some, for 'tis Sunday; some, because 'tis wet; Another writes because his father writ, And proves himself a bastard by his wit."

"An author! 'tis a venerable name! How few deserve it, and what numbers claim! Unbless'd with sense above their peers refined, Who shall stand up dictators to mankind? Nay, who dare shine, if not in virtue's cause? That sole proprietor of just applause."

"For who can write so fast as men run mad?"

"Some future strain, in which the muse shall tell How science dwindles, and how volumes swell. How commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candle to the sun."

"And then, exulting in their taper, cry, "Behold the Sun;" and, Indian-like, adore."

"It is certainly not agreeable to natural justice that a stranger should reap the beneficial pecuniary produce of another man's work."

"A writer's fame will not be the less, that he has bread, without being under the necessity of prostituting his pen to flattery or party, to get it."

"He who engages in a laborious work (such, for instance, as Johnson's Dictionary) which may employ his whole life, will do it with more spirit if, besides his own Glory, he thinks it may be a provision for his family."

"The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves."

"Indeed, unless a man can link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men, so that they shall draw from them as from wells, there is no more immortality to the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and the bones."

"A man of moderate Understanding, thinks he writes divinely: A man of good Understanding, thinks he writes reasonably."

"A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas."

"And so I penned It down, until at last it came to be, For length and breadth, the bigness which you see."

"Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind."

"The book that he has made renders its author this service in return, that so long as the book survives, its author remains immortal and cannot die."

"Dear authors! suit your topics to your strength, And ponder well your subject, and its length; Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear."

"La pluma es lengua del alma."

"Apt Alliteration's artful aid."

"That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time."

"Habits of close attention, thinking heads, Become more rare as dissipation spreads, Till authors hear at length one general cry Tickle and entertain us, or we die!"

"None but an author knows an author's cares, Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears."

"So that the jest is clearly to be seen, Not in the words— but in the gap between; Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ, The substitute for genius, sense, and wit."

"Oh! rather give me commentators plain, Who with no deep researches vex the brain; Who from the dark and doubtful love to run, And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun."

"Aucun fiel n'a jamais empoisonne ma plume."

"Smelling of the lamp."

"Gracious heavens!" he cries out, leaping up and catching hold of his hair, "what's this? Print!"

"And choose an author as you choose a friend."

"The men, who labour and digest things most, Will be much apter to despond than boast; For if your author be profoundly good, 'Twill cost you dear before he's understood."

"When I want to read a book I write one."

"The author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children."

"The unhappy man, who once has trail'd a pen, Lives not to please himself, but other men; Is always drudging, wastes his life and blood, Yet only eats and drinks what you think good."

"All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having."

"For no man can write anything who does not think that what he writes is, for the time, the history of the world."

"The lover of letters loves power too."

"The writer, like a priest, must be exempted from secular labor. His work needs a frolic health; he must be at the top of his condition."

"Like his that lights a candle to the sun."

"Envy's a sharper spur than pay: No author ever spar'd a brother; Wits are gamecocks to one another."

"The most original modern authors are not so because they advance what is new, but simply because they know how to put what they have to say, as if it had never been said before."

"One writer, for instance, excels at a plan, or a title-page, another works away the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index."

""The Republic of Letters" is a very common expression among the Europeans."

"Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse."

"His [Burke's] imperial fancy has laid all nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation and every walk of art."

"Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word."

"But every little busy scribbler now Swells with the praises which he gives himself; And, taking sanctuary in the crowd, Brags of his impudence, and scorns to mend."

"Deferar in vicum vendentem thus et odores, Et piper, et quicquid chartis amicitur ineptis."

"Piger scribendi ferre laborem; Scribendi recte, nam ut multum nil moror."

"Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint Scripturus."

"Written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond."

"He [Milton] was a Phidias that could cut a Colossus out of a rock, but could not cut heads out of cherry stones."

"Each change of many-coloured life he drew, Exhausted worlds and then imagined new* Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil'd after him in vain."

"The chief' glory of every people arises from its authors."

"Tenet insanabile multo Scribendi cacoethes, et asgro in corde senescit."

"Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity."

"To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it."

"If you once understand an author's character, the comprehension of his writings becomes easy."

"Perhaps the greatest lesson which the lives of literary men teach us is told in a single word* Wait!"

"Whatever hath been written shall remain, Nor be erased nor written o'er again; The unwritten only still belongs to thee* Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be."

"Look, then, into thine heart and write!"

"It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century."

"He that commeth in print because he woulde be knowen, is like the foole that commeth into the Market because he woulde be seen."

"He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite."

"No author ever drew a character, consistent to human nature, but what he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies."

"You do not publish your own verses, Laelius; you criticise mine. Pray cease to criticise mine, or else publish your own."

"Jack writes severe lampoons on me, 'tis said—But he writes nothing, who is never read."

"He who writes distichs, wishes, I suppose, to please by brevity. But, tell me, of what avail is their brevity, when there is a whole book full of them?"

"The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr."

"To write upon all is an author's sole chance For attaining, at last, the least knowledge of any."

"Prsebet mihi littera linguam: Et, si non liceat scribere, mutus ero."

"Scriptaferuntannos; scriptis Agamemnona nosti, Et quisquis contra vel simul arma tulit."

"Why did I write? what sin to me unknown Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came."

"E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art—the art to blot."

"Whether the darken'd room to muse invite, Or whiten'd wall provoke the skew'r to write; In durance, exile, Bedlam, or the Mint, Like Lee or Budgel I will rhyme and print."

"Let him be kept from paper, pen, and ink; So may he cease to write, and learn to think."

"'Tis not how well an author says, But 'tis how much, that gathers praise."

"As though I lived to write, and wrote to live."

"Lis ont les textes pour eux, mais j'en suis fache pour les textes."

"Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio."

"Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears Moist it again, and frame some feeling line That may discover such integrity."

"Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well."

"Look in thy heart and write."

"The great and good do not die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens."

"Ah, ye knights of the pen! May honour be your shield, and truth tip your lances ! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him!"

"What the devil does the plot signify, except to bring in fine things?"

"So must the writer, whose productions should Take with the vulgar, be of vulgar mould."

"Smooth verse, inspired by no unlettered Muse."

"There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting."

"...and Abel was running. Against the winter sky and the long, light valley of the landscape at dawn, he seemed almost to be standing still, very little and alone."

"Now and then in winter, great angles of geese fly through the valley, and then the sky and the geese are the same color and the air is hard and damp and smoke rises from the houses of the town."

"Every six or seven years there is a great harvest of piñones far to the east of town. That harvest, like the deer in the mountains, is the gift of God."

"And Mariano fell and was exhausted. Fransisco held his stride all the way... and even then he could have gone on running, for no reason, for only the sake of running on."

"The mortar fire had stopped. ...The silence had awakened him—and the low, even mutter of the machine that was coming. ...His vision cleared and he saw the countless leaves dip and sail across the splinters of light. The machine... was coming. ...The sound of the machine brimmed at the ridge ...whole and deafening. His mouth fell open upon the cold, wet leaves, and he began to shake violently. ...Then, through the falling leaves, he saw the machine. It rose up behind the hill, black and massive, looming there in front of the sun, He saw it swell, deepen, and take shape on the skyline, as if it were some upheaval of earth. ...For a moment it seemed apart from the land ...Then it came crashing down to the grade, slow as a waterfall, thunderous, surpassing impact, nestling almost into the splash and boil of debris. He was shaking violently, and the machine bore down upon him, came close, and passed him by. A wind arose and ran along the slope, scattering the leaves."

""My grandfather is dead," Abel said. "You must bury him."... "My grandfather is dead," Abel repeated. His voice was low and even. There was no emotion, nothing."

"...and he began to run after them. He was running... and there was no reason to run but running itself and the land and the dawn appearing. The sun rose... and shone in shafts upon the road across the snow-covered valley and hills. ...His legs buckled and he fell in the snow. ...And he got up and ran on. He was alone and running on... he was past caring about the pain... and he could see at last without having to think. He could see the canyons and the mountains and the sky. He could see the rain and the river and the fields beyond... and under his breath he began to sing... House made of pollen, house made of dawn..."

"My Grandmother was a Storyteller; She knew her way around Words. She never learned to read and write, but somehow She knew the good of reading and writing; She had learned how to Listen and Delight. She had learned that in Words and in Language, and there only, She could have whole and consummate Being. You see for Her, Words were Medicine. They were Magic and Invisible. They came from Nothing into Sound and Meaning. They were beyond price. They could neither be bought nor sold, and She never threw Words away. She told me Stories and She taught me how to Listen. I was a Child, and I Listened."

"The journey began one day long ago on the edge of the northern Plains. It was carried on over the course of many generations... For the s the beginning was a struggle for existence in the bleak northern mountains."

"They began a long migration from the headwaters of the eastward to the and south to the . ...In alliance with the s they held dominion in the southern Plains for a hundred years."

"The young Plains culture of the Kiowas withered and died like grass that is burned in the prairie wind. ...in every direction, as far as the eye could see, carrion lay out on the land. The buffalo was the animal representation of the sun, the essential and sacrificial victim of the . When the wild herds were destroyed, so too was the will of the Kiowa people; there was nothing to sustain them in spirit."

"And the journey is an evocation of... a landscape that is incomparable, a time that is gone forever, and the human spirit, which endures."

"The imaginative experience and the historical express equally the traditions of man's reality."

"A single knole rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Witchita Range. For my people, the s, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name . ...To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun."

"My grandmother had died in the Spring... Her name was Ajo... Her forebears came down from the high country in western nearly three centuries ago. ...In the late seventeenth century they began a long migration to the south and east. It was a journey toward the dawn, and it led to a golden age. Along the way the s were befriended by the Crows, who gave them the culture and religion of the Plains. They acquired horses... They acquired Tai-me, the sacred doll, from that moment the object and symbol of their worship, and so shared in the divinity of the sun."

"There is a perfect freedom in the mountains, but it belongs to the eagle and the elk, the badger and the bear. The Kiowas reckoned their stature by the distance they could see..."

"The sun is at home on the plains. Precisely there does it have the certain character of a god."

"She was ten when the Kiowas came together for the last time as a living Culture. They could find no buffalo... a company of soldiers rode out from ... to disperse the tribe. Forbidden without cause the essential act of their faith, having seen the wild herds slaughtered and left to rot upon the ground, the Kiowas backed away forever from the medicine tree. ...My grandmother was there. Without bitterness, and for as long as she lived, she bore a vision of deicide."

"The aged visitors who came to my grandmother's house when I was a child were made of lean and leather, and bore themselves upright. They wore great black hats and bright ample shirts that shook in the wind. They rubbed fat upon their hair and wound their braids with stripes of colored cloth. ...They were an old council of warlords, come to remind and be reminded of who they were."

"There were frequent prayer meetings and great nocturnal feasts. When I was a child I played with my cousins outside... where the lamplight fell upon the ground and the singing of the old people rose up around us and carried away into the darkness. ...And afterwards, ...I lay down with my grandmother and could hear the frogs away by the river and feel the motion of the air."

"[T]he s came out one by one into the world through a hollow log. ...They looked all around and saw the world. It made them glad to see so many things. They called themselves Kwuda, "coming out.""

"Before there were horses the Kiowas had need of dogs. There was a man who lived alone; he had been thrown away. ...He had one arrow left, and he shot a bear; but the bear... ran away. ...Then a dog came... and said that many enemies were coming... The man could think of no way to save himself. But the dog said, "...If you take care of my puppies, I will show you how to get away." The dog led the man... to safety."

"When my father was a boy, an old man used to come to Mammedaty's house and pay his respects. His name was Cheney, and he was an arrowmaker. ...Every morning ...Cheney would paint his wrinkled face, go out, and pray aloud to the rising sun. ...In my mind ...I know where he stands and where his voice goes on the rolling grasses and where the sun comes up... There, at dawn, you can feel the silence. It is cold and clear and deep like water. It takes hold of you and will not let you go."

"In the land is made of many colors. When I was a boy I rode out over the red and yellow and purple earth to the west of Jemez Pueblo. ...I came to know that country... truly and intimately, in every season, from a thousand points of view. I know the living sound motion of a horse and the sound of hooves. I know what it is, on a hot day in August or September, to ride into a bank of cold, fresh rain."

"I know how much he loved that animal; I think I know what was going on in his mind: If you will give me my life and the life of my family, I will give you the life of this black-eared horse."

"There have been times when I thought I understood how it was that a man might be moved to preserve the bones of a horse—and another to steal them away."

"In the dense growth of the bottomland a dark drift moves on the . A spider enters a small pool of light on Rainy Mountain Creek, and downstream, at the convergence, a Channel catfish turns around in the current and slithers to the surface, where a dragonfly hovers and darts. Away on the high ground grasshoppers and bees set up a crackle and roar in the fields, and the s and scissortails whistle and wheel about. Somewhere in the maze of gullies a calf shivers and balls in a tangle of chinaberry trees. And high in the distance a hawk turns in the sun and sails."

"Eleven magpies standing in the plain. They are illusion—wind and rain revolve— And they recede in the darkness, and dissolve."

"About the year 1850 in Kentucky a daughter was born to I. J. Galyen and his wife, Natachee, newcomers to the knobs from the foothills of the . ...He settled in the countryside known as "the knobs," for its numerous abrupt hills, in southwestern Kentucky. Natachee bore him four children, one of whom was Nancy Elizabeth, my great-grandmother. Nancy... married George Scott of Woodbury and bore him five children. Her first son was Theodore, my grandfather."

"My mother tells me that the ancestral house at Scott's Landing was built in 1784. Charles Scott was a general in the Revolutionary War and the fourth governor of Kentucky... he commanded the Kentucky troops in the ."

"Robie Ellis... said of Anne Elizabeth's children, his grandchildren: They will all be hanged by the time they are twenty for their damned Indian blood."

"In 1929 my mother was a Southern belle... It was about this time that she began to see herself as an Indian. That dim native heritage became a fascination and a cause... She imagined who she was. ...She was already a raving beauty. ...very black hair and very blue eyes; her skin... of an olive complexion... She moved... with certain confidence. Above all, she expected the world to be interesting; she would not stand to be bored. ...And she went off to Haskell Institute, the Indian school..."

"[1929] was the year in which the old woman Kau-au-ointy died... and was buried at Cemetery... The Kiowas, who stole people as well as horses... took her from her homeland of Mexico when she was a child. ...Kau-au-ointy outlived her slave status, married, and brought new blood to the tribe... In my dreams she [my great-great-grandmother] told me wonderful stories."

"Sampt'e drew the string back until he felt the bow wobble... and he let it go. It shot across the long light of the morning and struck the black face of a stone... glanced then away... limping... then it settled down in the grass and lay still. ...he believed that the arrow might take flight again, so much of his life did he give into it."

"Mammedaty was my grandfather, whom I never knew. Yet he came to be imagined posthumously... having invested the shadow of his presence in an object or a word, in his name above all. He enters into my dreams... His grandfather Guipagho the Elder was a famous chief. His mother... was the daughter of Kau-au-ointy... There was a considerable vitality in him... and a self-respect that verged upon arrogance."

"Just before Mammedaty's time the s had been brought to their knees in the infamous winter campaigns of the Seventh Cavalry, and their Plains culture... virtually destroyed."

"The Kiowas... For a hundred years... they ruled an area... from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico... But by the time Mammedaty was born the Kiowas had been routed in the Indian wars, the great herds of buffalo had been destroyed, and the sun dance prohibited by law."

"Now when I hear spoken—mostly by the older people who are passing away—it is to me very good. ...the sound is like a warm wind that arises from my childhood. It is the music of memory. ...much of the power and magic and music of words consist not in the meaning but in sound. Storytellers, actors, and children know this too."

"The Kiowas migrated from the Yellowstone to the southern plains, arriving at the drainage in the early 1700s. They were hunters and nomads and storytellers. ...They defined the warrior ideal, and they brought the... horse culture or culture to its fullest expression."

"My father told me stories from the Kiowa oral tradition even before I could talk. Those stories became permanent... the nourishment of my imagination for the whole of my life. They are among the most valuable gifts I have ever been given."

"The story of the arrowmaker, the "man made of words," is perhaps the first story I was told. ...it is a story about a story, about the efficacy of language and the power of words. ...I am sure I do not yet understand it in all of its consequent meanings. Nor do I expect to understand it so. The stories that I keep close... are those that yield more and more of their spirit in time."

"If an arrow is well made it will have tooth marks on it. ...The Kiowas ...straightened them with their teeth. Then they drew them to the bow to see that they were straight."

"Imagine: somewhere in the prehistoric distance a man holds up in his hand a crude instrument— ...like a daub or a broom bearing pigment—and fixes the wonderful image in his mind's eye to a wall or a rock. In that instant is accomplished... the advent of art. ...in the long reach of time he is utterly without distinction, except: he draws. ...all the stories of the world proceed from the moment in which he makes his mark. All literatures issue from his hand."

"At the heart of American Indian oral tradition is a deep and unconditional belief in the efficacy of language. Words are intrinsically powerful. They are magical. By means of words one can bring about physical change in the universe... one can quiet the raging weather, bring forth the harvest, ward off evil, rid the body of sickness and pain, subdue an enemy, capture the heart of a lover, live in the proper way, and venture beyond death. ...there is nothing more powerful. ...To be careless in the presence of words... is to violate a fundamental morality."

"It is sometimes enough that one places one's voice on the silence... [S]ilence too is powerful. It is the dimension in which ordinary and extraordinary events take their proper places. In the Indian world, a word is spoken or a song is sung not against, but within the silence. ...[S]ilence is the sanctuary of sound."

"Consider this ritual formula from the : ... My voice thou restore for me. Restore all for me in beauty. Make beautiful all that is before me. Make beautiful all that is behind me. It is done in beauty... ...the achieves a remarkable stability, an authority not unlike that of Scripture."

"The dullimer is... one of two known to exist, the second... unearthed... at Coatepec in 1958... Mine is... the better example of the armorer's art, especially with respect to the amulet, a leather bracelet to which the dullimer can be affixed and... activated with remarkable dispatch... used, according to oral tradition, to fell even the great beasts of the jungle. ...[O]ne day I laid the dullimer to rest once and for all. I had a dream in which it seemed to me that I could decipher the ancient markings on the amulet: I, Chopetl, am grown weary of war; I have been deadly even to the gods."

"... I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water... I am the farthest star... the cold of dawn... the roaring of the rain I am the glitter on the crust of the snow I am the long track of the moon in a lake I am a flame of four colors... I am the whole dream of these things You see, I am alive, I am alive I stand in good relation to the earth... the gods... to all that is beautiful... Mine is a... shield... there is [the dangerous] anger... boasting in it there is [the beautiful] yellow pollen... red earth in it. ... there is [the sacred] vision... remembrance in it. ... there is [the powerful] medicine... a in it. My life is this shield..."

"One autumn morning in 1946 I woke up at Jemez Pueblo. ...in the bright morning ...I found the last, best home of my childhood."

"When my parents and I moved to Jemez I was twelve years old. ...The village and the valley, the canyons and the mountains had been there from the beginning of time, waiting form me."

"I was embarked upon the greatest adventure of all; I had come to the place of my growing up."

"The sun cast a golden light upon the adobe walls and the cornfields; it set fire to the leaves of willows and cottonwoods along the river; and a fresh cold wind ran down from the canyons and carried the good scents of pine and cedar smoke, of bread baking in the beehive ovens, and of rain in the mountains."

"I looked southward into the plain; there a caravan of covered wagons reached as far as the eye could see. These were the s... I had never seen such a pageant; it was as if the whole proud people, the Diné, had been concentrated into one endless migration. There was a great dignity to them... And when they set up camp in the streets, they were perfectly at home, their dogs about them. They made coffee and fried bread and roasted mutton on their open fires."

"In the winter dusk I heard coyotes barking away by the river, the sound of the drums in the , and the voice of the village crier, ringing at the rooftops."

"I came to know the land by going out upon it in all seasons... until it became the very element in which I lived my daily life."

"I had a horse named Pecos... Pecos could outrun all the other horses in the village, and he always wanted to prove it. ...My ancestors, who were s, should have been proud ..."

"Riding is an exercise of the mind. I dreamed a good deal on the back of my horse, going out into the hills alone."

"Bear and I are one... My Indian name is Tsoai-talee, which in Kiowa means "Rock-tree boy." Tsoai, "Rock-tree," is in Wyoming. That is where, long ago, a Kiowa boy turned into a bear and where his sisters were born into the sky and became the stars of the Big Dipper. Through the power of stories and names, I am the reincarnation of that boy. From the time the name Tsoai-talee was conferred onto me as an infant, I have been possessed of Bear's spirit. The Kiowas... believe that... Bear is the animal representation of the wilderness."

"Bear is an impractical visionary. His eyesight is weak, but he sees beyond the edge of the world, beyond time..."

"In western I was shown articles of the bear fest... In the presence of these things I felt their power. In their presence I understood something about Bear's transcendent spirit, how... Bear dances on the edge of life and death, crossing over and back again."

"Something in me hungers for wild mountains and rivers and plains. I love to be on Bear's ground... And Bear is welcome in my dreams, for in that cave of sleep I am at home to Bear."

"URSET I dream of berries... I dream of high meadows to which my kin come in the spring and summer when the wind is fragrant with buckwheat and camas and sweet roots are thick and tangled in the loam. ...lusty sows sauntering in the fields of flowers and of their cubs at play. ...clouds gathering at the summits and of rain descending in curtains on the dawn. ...hawks casting the shadows of their flight upon sunlit steeps. I dream of the moon riding and of leaves quaking on pale, speckled limbs, and darkness rising like water to the moon."

"YAHWEH A story in which there is not the realization of grace is but a shadow, a shell, a thing without substance. Grace is the substance of story, albeit invisible and remote. Grace is the soul of story. ...Or perhaps a mask behind which there is no presence. ...only silence, a perfect stillness."

"YAHWEH [Poetry] is the highest of all languages... higher even than mathematics. It is on a plane with music."

"YAHWEH Poor Man, he had been trying so hard to talk, for such a long time. Then the children went out and played together. At the end of the day they had possession of language."

"YAHWEH Nothing will come of [evolution], as it has come from nothing."

"Glen "Pop" Warner... has distinguished himself as a model of a successful coach... an eminent leader of men. ...He can take an ordinary team and make it extraordinary. In his team he has exceptional talent... And he has in arguably the greatest athlete of the twentieth century. But... his Indians have no "killer" instinct. They care more for honor and bravery than for winning. ...[A]n old man in the corner of the room ...listens ...This is ."

"Exterior. Football field. Late afternoon. The game is over. CARLISLE 27. ARMY 6. The players of both teams—dirty, bloody, exhausted—mingle, shaking hands on their way to the locker rooms. Dwight Eisenhower, limping badly, makes a great effort to intercept . He extends his hand and seems to want to say something but doesn't. His silence is pure tribute. Thorpe takes his hand, regards him for a moment."

"I believe that I fashion my own life out of words and images, and that's how I get by. If I didn't do those things, I think that I would find my existence a problem of some sort. Writing, giving expression to my spirit and to my mind, that's a way of surviving, of ordering one's life. That's a way of living, of making life acceptable to oneself. (1981)"

"I believe in a supremacy of the imagination. And I believe that fiction is a superior kind of reality. What we imagine is the best of us. (1981)"

"Favorite writers? Herman Melville. Norman McClain, Emily Dickinson, and Wallace Stevens. (1982)"

"Myth is at the beginning and ending of all story, of all literature. (1990)"

"I wouldn't be writing now if Momaday hadn't done that book. I would have died. (JB: What did it do for you?) ALLEN: It told me that I was sane-or if I was crazy at least fifty thousand people out there were just as nutty in exactly the same way I was, so it was okay. I was not all alone. It did that and it brought my land back to me."

"The voice with which he greeted me was warm and deep, and the words spoken in a way which gave weight to every syllable. It was a voice which one might expect from a man who wrote and continues to write of the magical nature and power of language."

"The authors who really touched my heart, of course, are authors like Vine Deloria and Scott Momaday...I mean, I've never read a novel as compelling as House Made of Dawn......there's not a word, a phrase that he can use that doesn't just haunt me. That includes much of his prose."

"Momaday speaks with a deep resonance using cultivated speech, for he cares as much about language sounds as how his words look on the page."

"House Made of Dawn borrows its title from a healing ceremony centuries old. The novel tells of a young Jemez Indian named Abel from the Pueblo where Momaday grew up, the age of twelve through high school. Its prose rhythms, complex narrative points-of-view, and flashbacks assimilate experimental techniques in modern fiction and New World romantic themes. ...Abel's dislocations as a contemporary Indian fracture a voice that searches for consciousness. His ancestors were exiled from the plains by plague and taken in at Jemez. ...Abel was kidnapped from his grandfather and put into a government boarding school, drafted into a world war, and sentence to prison for ritual homicide, then relocated in the urban ghetto of Los Angeles. Past, present, and future—Indian life as-it-was, then estranged among whites, followed by a prolonged return—disjoint the narrative. School, war, prison, and the city are white institutions where the martyred son of the earth, the biblical , lives through the Indian nightmare of a machine come into the garden."

"Once into the novel... a perceptive reader may begin to realize that sophistication in House Made of Dawn is of a different order from that in canonized texts. It is a sophistication of "otherness," a discourse requiring that readers pass through an "alien conceptual horizon" and engage a "reality" unfamiliar... What has matured with Momaday is not merely an undeniable facility with techniques and tropes of modernism, but... the profound awareness of conflicting epistemologies... With Momaday the American Indian novel shows its ability to appropriate the discourse of the privileged center and make it "bear the burden" of an "other" world-view. Momaday's novel represents more fully than any Native American novel before it the "assertion of a different perspective.""

"if Indians are left out of every other class on the university campus, even where they are pertinent-for example, leaving Scott Momaday out of a class on twentieth-century American literature, something like that somewhere else there has to be a balance. There has to be someone somewhere else who is going to emphasize Scott Momaday to the exclusion of the ones who are emphasized in the other class. I hope that at some point that will become balanced. I hope that pretty soon an American literature class will just automatically include someone like Scott Momaday-and some of the other people: Charles Eastman, you know, the other writers in our history."

"The new images of the Indian in the public mind have emerged as a result of primitivistic longings in a society whose trust in limitless technological advance and a purely scientific, materialistic view of the natural environment is no longer secure. The Indian as keeper of mystical knowledge or as natural ecologist is an updated version of earlier images which reveals more about the state of the dominant society than about contemporary Indians. Ironically, Momaday himself has come close to falling victim to the temptation of image making in his contributions to the Indian-as-ecologist debate. This shows that Indians are not immune to adopting images created by mainstream American culture. On the whole, however, Momaday's work depicts the worlds of American Indians objectively and without racial bias."

"N. Scott Momaday has made himself readily available for interviews throughout his career. Among the recurrent issues raised in these conversations are Momaday's multi-ethnic experience, his view of the Indian's place in American society, his synthesis of native oral traditions and the Western literary canon, his concern for ecology and conservation, his theories of language and the imagination, the influences on his academic and artistic development, his work as a teacher and painter, and, of course, his own comments on specific works. Momaday's responses to queries on these topics are remarkably consistent."

"I have seen him gradually comprehending, accepting, and even asserting his Indianness. Actually, of course, his Indianness is as much assumed as inborn."

"Once we're vaccinated, we have memory B cells and T cells that are readily kicked back into action by either a vaccine booster shot, or by catching COVID-19. This is active protection, we're simply jump starting the natural immunity we've relied on through evolution."

"They rely on what they call 'natural immunity', a term that's new to me."

"I've been working on the immune response to viruses for decades, am an author on hundreds of research papers and, in my professional life, can't recall that I've ever use the term 'natural immunity'. It's just immunity."

"Mongolia is a country that is capable of fixing past mistakes. It is an open country, and we need investments if we want to avoid capital shortages, currency depreciation and inflation. Improving the legal environment in order to attract investments again and regain the confidence of investors is therefore one of the priorities for my administration."

"I made a very historic decision. Every month, we will give cash to our athletes for their lifetime if they get medals in the Olympic games."

"Of course, when you are in office, you have certain responsibilities. But when you are out of office, you also have more freedom to express your ideas."

"The only way to bring peace and stability is through a system of [norms], laws and institutions that every country agrees to abide by. If the UN fails to adopt [such a system], we all fail. When we face global challenges, we must admit one thing: no one country – big or small – can address them on its own. Therefore, the coordinated actions of all players and countries are needed."

"We all know there are sound critiques of the UN. If our United Nations is to survive in the new reality, we must embrace substantive change. We need reforms to build a just common home. If we delay action, change will become more painful and challenging."

"We have two big neighbors, and, of course, we are really striving to maintain neighborly good relations with our two neighbors. As well, we want to have good relations with other nations. All those other nations we call our third neighbor. This is the concept after 1990."

"We never hide our shadow, we give more power to our people, to our media. If our three million people participate, I think we are going to be a big, powerful country."

"The values connection is very important. We have to strengthen that connection. If America invests in that, America will have many friends who live on their own, not with bombs or American troops."

"We have a long-term goal to build the foundation for continued, practical cooperation by continuously holding official and unofficial meetings based on the principle of respecting the rights and proposals of the participants."

"No dictatorship can stay (in power) for good... People's aspirations for a free life will be the everlasting strength."

"We arrived from being the most isolated and closed communist regime in the world to one of the most open. Today we have a dynamic market economy, a vibrant, creative society."

"We should never take democracy for granted. Neither should we worship it. It must be nurtured and strengthened on a daily basis. It is our way of living, our state of mind. A democratic society is sustainable because it aims at the highest development of every one of its members."

"Therefore, our common goal as leaders is to provide for an environment where the democratic institutions can thrive – provide for rule of law, human rights, democratic governance, and free and fair elections. And we must enforce accountability, accountability, and again, accountability. The people will do the rest in a democracy. For only in a democracy is everyone provided with opportunities for self-development and realization."

"A mob wielding cudgels and cutlasses is hot on the heels of a youthwho desperately crosses to the other side of the road, narrowlymissing the fender of a truck. The mob follows growing bigger asit goes. The youth, looking over his shoulder as he runs, crashesinto a light pole and falls senseless to the ground. Before he canregain a second wind the mob is on him. I watch the cudgels riseand fall; I hear his wailing ululating screams finally turn into awhimper. They poured petrol on him and set him ablaze"

"The students, who should have been busy taking theirbaths and getting set for lectures, sat idly...discussing the boycottof lectures"

"More than once ourtaxi was forced to hug the kerb as siren blaring military jeepspassed at top speed...”"

"There had been an accident. Bola’s family-father, mother, and twosisters had been in a car crash. It was late in the evening...theywere on their way to Ibadan for a visit...The father driving hadfailed to see the truck laying on its side in the middle of the road.It was a military truck carrying the furniture of an officer ontransfer from Lagos to Ibadan. The father and mother, who were in front, had died instantly; Peju, the elder sister, died on the way to the hospital; the other sister, Lola, sustained minor injuries"

"Look out there, see the long queue of cars waiting for fuel. Someof them have been there for three days...And we are a majorproducer of oil"

"The houses were old and craggy and lichened. The place had theunfinished, abandoned appearance of an under waterscape.Crouching under the bigger or in their own clusters were hastilybuilt wood and zinc structures that housed an incredibly largenumber of families: the fathers were mostly out-of-work drivers,laborers, fugitives convalescing between prison terms"

"We don finally reach the end of the road. We don dey together since I was born, but now time don come wey me and you must part. Bye-bye.Goodnight. Ka chi foo. Oda ro. Sai gobe"

"Hagar takes to prostitution whenrejection and hunger look her straight in the face"

"Look, we are living under siege. Their very presence on our streetsand in the government house instead of the barrack where theybelong is an act of aggression. They hold us cowed with guns sothat they will steal our money—they will continue subjugating uskilling all dissenters one by one, sending them to exile till there isno competitor left to oppose them."

"We came to tell you sir, that our clinic is run-down and abandoned.We came to tell you that we don’t have a single borehole onMorgan street... we are here to protest against this neglect--- weare dying from diseases. We are dying from a lack of hope. Andthat is why we are here today to protest. And this is the way wefeel we ought to express our displeasure"

"You must take a year off, one of these days, before you’re old and tired and weighed down by responsibility. Go away somewhere, and read. Read all the important books. Educate yourself, then you’ll see the world in a different way."

"Can you continue to love a person regardless of such shortcomings? Maybe because you hope to save them? Or because you can't help it? Isn't that what love is all about?"

"Our job is to find out the truth, even if it is buried deep in the earth."

"The further from home you wander, the closer you get to Siberia."

"Nostalgia settled on my shoulders like the arm of a long-lost friend, urging me to look back and listen; it had been years since I heard such morning sounds, such silence."

"I've seen children snatched away from their mothers, never to be reunited. I've seen husbands taken from their wives and kids and sent away to prison. I've seen grown men flogged by soldiers in front of their kids. That's how history is made, and it's our job to witness it."

"There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a stranger in a strange city."

"Not all of us have that luxury, of a past. My history doesn't offer me much in that respect."

"Our story is over, the ink has dried, each of us must move on now and it will be as if we had never met, never loved, and never dreamt together."

"I didn't love him. He was a good, decent guy, but I wanted more at that time." She shrugged. "I was not so young anymore. Time was passing for me. I wanted more… excitement."

"Sometimes poets have to be imperfect so their poetry can be perfect."

"Happiness is important, but I wouldn't say it is the main purpose of human existence."

"I think if you’re a white Zimbabwean, you have an extra responsibility to give back if you can. My hope as a publisher for more than 30 years is that I have enabled a corpus of work proffering many different stories and points of view."

"Books open up new worlds for us emotionally, geographically, culturally; by encouraging understanding, they help us to develop more compassionate, rational, tolerant societies, giving rise to a more broad-minded world."

"For me, literature is an incredibly important way of telling the truth."

"A good writer has a sense of integrity that is hard to compromise."

"Editors are a bit like stage-hands: the play can’t go on without them, and yet their role is necessarily in the shadows. It is, however, interesting to see how many writers acknowledge their editors – the third eye is of value."

"Rosina Umelo's Who Are You? wonderfully evokes a wide range of characters and their community in this story about an abandoned child."

"Surviving Biafra: A Nigerwife’s Story, is based on the first-hand account of Rosina Umelo, which takes the story to the end and beyond. It seemed to be a natural progression."

"Another writer still alive and kicking past 90 years old is Rosina Umelo, a writer best known for her short stories, children’s books, and young adult fiction."

"She’s popular for writing such books as The House in the Forest, Dark Blue is for Dreams, and Something to Hide."

"records of the military standard have not been completely told in light of the fact that individuals were occupied with working without archiving."

"You will have a way which you would need to design the thing, you get to a climax and you need to stay up there and let people go home with that feeling of patriotism and so on."

"Into us a child is born."

"Thank you for meeting with me today so that we can discuss the development of literary broadcasting in Ghana and your experiences of it. I am glad that you asked for us to meet here, in the home of my mother Efua Sutherland, as it was home, of course, not only for me but also for you. So we should be able to look at the trajectory of our lives since we were young around this place and how literature has shaped our lives in so many different ways. Welcome."

"Suddenly in 1951 I started…creative writing seriously."

"I suddenly saw …[w]e needed a programme to develop playwriting and…that led to… the Ghana Experimental Theatre."

"The Drama Studio came as a sudden answer to a problem I had been having, starting the theatre programme."

"Everyone’s talent should be exercised for the good of the whole of society, because [w]hat we cannot buy is the spirit of originality and endeavour which makes a people dynamic and creative."

"I shared Nkrumah’s belief in and vision for the integration of different ethnic groups on the continent, I stated in my play Foriwa (1967) through the character Labaran, “Who is a stranger anywhere in these times in whose veins the blood of this land flows?”"

"I want to be able to look up as I walk and see dignity in the place of my birth. All of us should want that."

"In the life of the mind they [the Greeks] reached frontiers which the rest of mankind cannot permit themselves to fall short of, at least in their attempts to acknowledge and to profit, even where they are inferior to the Greeks in the capacity for achievement. It is for this reason that posterity needs to study the Greeks; if we ignore them we are simply accepting our own decline."

"Their knowledge and their faculty of observation were extraordinary. By their study of the world the Greeks illuminate not only their own nature but that of all other ancient peoples; without them, and the phillhellenic Romans, there would be no knowledge of past times, for all other nations attended to nothing but themselves, their own citadels, temples and gods."

"All subsequent objective perception of the world is only elaboration on the framework the Greeks began. We see with the eyes of the Greeks and use their phrases when we speak."

"Burckhardt's Cultur der Renaissance in Italien is the most penetrating and subtle treatise on the history of civilisation that exists in literature; but its merit lies in the originality with which the author uses common books, rather than in actually new investigations."

"In reality, then, it was the Swiss historian, Jakob Burckhardt, who in 1860 established the concept that has been current in our time—the idea of a Renaissance as a general movement, particularly associated with the fifteenth century, coming to its climax around the year 1500, and primarily taking place in Italy. It was Burckhardt who conceived of the term Renaissance as descriptive of a whole historical period, as a great chapter in Italian history, and as a decisive stage or turning-point in the development of an entire civilisation, so that things which had hitherto been considered separate—the development of the modern state, for example—had now become enveloped by the concept too. And Burckhardt was one of the founders of what we call Kulturgeschichte, coming to this particular subject, indeed, with many of the prepossessions of the art-historian."

"I love a role that I can ground somewhere in myself. There are actors who love to extend themselves, I like to find extensions of myself."

"The experience of having my first child has shown me to wait on God. I do not know what I want, I don't know when I will get what I want. I just pray for grace and good health."

"It is easy to make people laugh if you do not make them sit and scratch about the things that you are talking about because social problems apply to everyone"

"Whatever profession it is you are in, you know that you want to get back home and deal with the society within your reach so if you want to touch so many people you have to look for a subject that touches everyone."

"“The word of God is the healer.”"

"Nearly twenty years ago, I began as a classroom teacher in Richmond, VA. Many of my students struggled due to community and domestic violence."

"The communities that I serve are plagued by violence and substance abuse. A few years into my career, my best friend, Angel Jackson and her father Herbert Levi Sharpe, Sr. were murdered. This changed the trajectory of my entire career and I began to focus more on mental health and mindfulness in the black community."

"I am passionate about connecting children of color to yoga and mindfulness and in building healthy communities by disrupting historical trauma and poverty."

"I loved theater and writing short stories as a child. I was always a creative and energetic child."

"Was I proud to be a pioneer? Apart from my being the first woman guide I wasn’t that different from my peers. Women mountaineers went way back and then there was the generation immediately before me: role models who formed an all-women club three years before I was born."

"The best things about climbing? Unlimited space. I know where I am in mountains. The stillness: not silence because there is always some sound even if it’s no more than a breeze over rock, but there is no noise. Solitude is fine but, even better, just one companion: the other person on the rope with whom there is a bond that transcends any other relationship: trust, faith, an intimacy that is asexual but essential because in the last resort you are each responsible for the other’s life."

"But the basic pleasure in the hills is the natural environment which can be as fulfilling in later life as rock climbing was in one’s heyday. Equally dangerous when old (and particularly solo) and thus most satisfying to the spirit because the delight in challenges and the pleasure in calculating risks never dies."

"Writing, becoming a successful writer, was a different matter but not unique in the trade. We don’t choose a course in life; our genes dictate the route. I wasn’t born to be a climber and a writer, rather I was inclined to both genetically and the influences arrived: a supportive parent, a perceptive English teacher, favourite authors."

"The "rush to the town" is known to be one of the signs of racial ruin. It foreran the fall of Rome and of other great powers of the past. Peasant nations may be subjected, but they outlive their oppressors; for in them the family, which is the living cell of the nation, has a direct source of life in the land on which it lives, and States and empires might go into anarchy, yet the peasant community would survive. A wide view of history shows that humanity flourishes when the town is the adminicle of a rural society, the centre in which it has craftsmen to make its tools, merchants to exchange its wares, and colleges to educate its people. When the balance tilts, and the town becomes the main and normal dwelling place of the race, with the countryside merely its vegetable garden—when, so to speak, man goes indoors to live and gives up the open-air—then decay begins and doom, within a few generations, is certain."

"Experience helps in terms of being able to do the job in a satisfactory manner so when people see your experience play out, ideally they acknowledge your skillset and give you more opportunities."

"I went to school in England and I was taught about slavery, but I was taught about it from a very European point of view - that this was a horrible episode, but actually, Europeans then realised that it was a terrible thing they were doing and so very kindly, as a gift, gave freedom to the slaves."

"How we danced. The music poured through our veins and we flowed with the beat. The wheel had come full circle. We wound and unwound our bodies seamlessly as if we had no bones. Is there a sight more beautiful, the older women said, than a Yoruba girl dancing?"

"Through Yoruba Girl Dancing, Simi Bedford ingeniously, entertainingly, eloquently, and intelligently examines the complicated issues of home and identity, language and diaspora, in multiple contexts."

"You can read a lot of books and the main characters are white people - especially in the classics - and after a while you forget that you're not white, almost, because it's this big pervasive culture. And then you find books like Yoruba Girl Dancing [by Simi Bedford] and you think: it's just as interesting to be Nigerian in England as it is to be white in England."

"In my pre-teen years, I read books such as Yoruba Girl Dancing by Simi Bedford, Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell and books by Rosa Guy. I also read a lot of Enid Blyton and Betsy Byars."

"daughter wants to marry at a young age, I would first have the necessary conversations with her and if i know this is what she needs, i will allow her. I won’t allow premarital sex in my house."

"My religion has a great influence on my lifestyle and definitely my work. Coming from a very Islamic background, I see and take the Islamic point of view all the time. I let the Qur’an and Sunnah guide my actions and decisions always."

"I think they must tackle three important sectors: power, refineries and diversify our economy. Then, a systematic eradication of corruption must kick start these three."

"People’s experiences define how they view life. A man who has been through it all, he might want to resort to the village, it’s not so much of a bad idea to catch them young. When you pick a poor girl,a girl from her back ground knowing that her expectations fall in line with what you want.Men who successfully marry from the village, know all she wants and her definition of success will be to give birth and take care of their children"

"Half Education Is Madness."

"The suppression of citizens' right to assemble and voice their concerns hampers the democratic ideals the country aspires to uphold."

"it is a clarion call for the parents to serve that the rate of female caused gender social vice is much in Nigeria all because there is neglect from the educational sector."

"Nutrition should be a celebration of diversity, not a prescription."

"When they force me to accept the massacre as love Do you know that I am with you."

"The messy slow path is actually faster."

"If your voice is high, only a few people will hear. If your thought is high, then thousands of people will listen to you."

"Life is all about grabbing opportunities that come your way."

"Meditation is the best way to overcome your inner negativity and reprogram your mind."

"Success is not the absence of failure; it's the persistence through failure."

""Invajy's content has been reshaping lives with simple yet powerful life lessons." – *Positive Psychology Weekly*"

"I'm a disciplinarian, I don't condone gossip and I don't suffer fools easily."

"I like to learn, I'm open to sensible criticism, and I have a lot of respect for people with principles."

"Opinions are like noses, we are all entitled to one."

"It’s an even stranger phenomenon…that one should choose a profession to try to be someone else all day"

"It doesn’t detract from the fact that she is an extraordinarily versatile and instinctive actress, constantly in demand, never out of work, and has acted in everything from musical theatre, “although I cannot sing”, to comedy, farce, to Shakespearean drama"

"She is fun, charming and has a compelling presence"

"Her talent as an actress, for which I’ve always been full of admiration, and was well aware of, but her prowess as a musician on the piano was a surprise. I was so impressed by her virtuosity on the piano and have ever since, often wondered if she had possibly missed her real vocation."

"Annalisa was a diminutive young woman in her early twenties with great inner beauty when, in the Seventies"

"My name would come up from time to time, but with few alternatives in the middle of an empty space"

"This emptiness has always upset me, but it also inspired me to do this project"

"I always knew it would be a collective effort where my actress friends would share their experiences"

"They were all determined and excited to make their voices heard"

"It was time to represent blacks in French film—in under a month, we went from coauthors to a true collective"

"The book is a commercial hit in French bookstores, proving that, contrary to what some believe, the public not only wants to read what we have to say, but they share our values of inclusion and diversity"

"I would be delighted if after this book, and with the other actions we plan to take, that all communities be represented"

"The best thing would be for all talents, regardless of skin color, to have access to the same opportunities"

"We survived whitewashing, blackface, tons of dealer roles, housekeepers with a Bwana accent, we survived the roles of terrorists, all the roles of hypersexualized girls"

"We’re not going to leave French cinema alone"

"We are a family. We say everything, right? All of you who are not impacted by issues related to invisibility, stereotypes or the issue of skin color…the good news is that it will not happen without you. Think inclusion"

"What is played in French cinema does not only concern our very privileged environment, it concerns all of society"

"most South Africans love Sne Mtshali. Especially I think that our plus sized queens will start getting off their shells. Living their best thick lives"

"Well as a performer who finds privilege in being able to tell stories of the roles I’m blessed with, I feel like how dare I be anyone but the character once the director has said action"

"I love how brave she is in her skin, how she’s not ashamed & afraid of her voice & thoughts. She knows what she wants and she goes for it. She’s not afraid of saying; No and doesn’t give a hoot of what people think of her. She lives her life according to her rules"

"Role with the punches, always keep your head up high. Don’t ever forget your crown and most of all stay humble"

"I have no intention of politicizing in the Bulgarian fashion. I am a Macedonian and this is how I see the position of my country: it is not Russia or Austria-Hungary that are the enemies of Macedonia, but Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia. Our country can be saved from ruin only by struggling fiercely against these states."

"I am a Macedonian. I write in the central Macedonian dialect, which from now on I shall always consider the Macedonian literary language."

"We Macedonians are Turkish subjects and interested in maintaining the unity of Turkey ... the Macedonian intelligentsia, if they examine their own interests, should for their own sake and the sake of their people devote all their moral strength to the prime task of maintaining the unity of Turkey."

"From the Macedonian point of view, the unification of all Macedonia with Bulgaria, Serbia or Greece is not desirable, but neither is it particularly frightening."

"What sort of new Macedonian nation can this be when we and our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have always been called Bulgarians? ... Macedonian as a nationality has never existed, they will say, and it does not exist now. There have always been two south Slav nationalities in Macedonia: Bulgarian and Serbian. So, any kind of Macedonian Slav revival is simply the empty concern of a number of fanatics who have no concept of South Slav history."

"If it is officially acknowledged that there are not several Slav nationalities in Macedonia, but only one, which is neither Bulgarian nor Serbian, and if Macedonia secedes as an independent Bishopric, Turkey will be immediately freed from interference in Macedonian affairs by the three neighboring states."

"Finally, many people will point out that our greatest misfortune is that we have no local Macedonian patriotism. If there were patriotism in Macedonia, we would think and work only for Macedonia. But now some of us still consider ourselves Bulgarian and link our interests with those of Bulgaria instead of studying our own country, Macedonia ..."

"The Macedonian national revival ... is basically the result of the competition between Bulgaria and Serbia over the Macedonian question."

"I was brought up to challenge myself, to try to be successful on my own terms. I was brought up to be focused. So I see myself as more fully engaged than ever before"

"I do not use brute force in my management style. I use my strategic abilities. I work hard to create a team environment. It’s extremely important for a leader to empower others in driving the success of the organization. I emphasize how essential it is to be nimble and always resourceful."

"My mother always emphasized that we should be able to hold a conversation on any topic for at least five minutes. This reinforced the value of knowledge and intellectual curiosity in us"

"Don't get discouraged, and don't let other people define your potential. In high school, when I told my guidance counselor that I wanted to apply to Harvard, she said that was an unrealistic expectation. My parents and others encouraged me to apply anyway, and I became the first person from my high school to ever attend Harvard. So hold onto your dreams, even when others try to diminish them. And think big"

"A very people-intensive profession. You spend a lot of time rolling up your sleeves to help other people solve a problem. I find that very satisfying, both intellectually and emotionally." It's also rewarding"

"when you can take things you learn in a business environment and apply them in a pro-bono context"

"Our efforts involve reaching out to people,", "making sure that they know who we are, and that we're interested in them"

"One of the things you have to trade off is how much time you're going to have for personal thing"

"“Don’t let other people’s diminished expectations for you be the truth about your life,”"

"“There’s no question that there are barriers, people who are going to try to make us feel badly about our prospects, people who are going to say it’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a concrete ceiling and you’re never going to overcome it, you’re never going to get there,”"

"“Should you even consider taking risks in an environment where the economy might be slowing down? Throughout my career, I’ve found it very important to have a mindset that says I have to keep taking chances, because that’s how you learn, that’s how you develop and that’s how you grow,”"

"“Even though the economy is more challenging, it’s still going to reward people who are creative and innovative and have vision.”"

"“I thought that it was really important, after having done the same thing for ten years, to take a risk and put myself in a situation that was going to be important for the future. Understanding how Internet companies work and what it takes to manage them and what it takes to make them profitable is going to be a critical skill for managers going forward … While it can be frustrating and difficult, it’s a wonderful thing to shake up your career and try something different,”"

"“Wherever you are in your career, you have to become an expert at something pretty quickly. Being a generalist and being a smart person is not going to get you where you need to go,”"

"“It’s very important to have a mentor who can help you understand the unwritten rules of the company. Try to find three or four people who can look out for you in different ways.”"

"“Think about hiring people who push you. It’s important that you create an environment among people that says we’re all trying to be better, we can all learn from each other, we can all inspire each other""

"“Think about the other side of your brain, the side that’s not about business, the side that is more creative … Through my characters, I can explore issues about women, race, ethnicity and all kinds of interesting things in a completely different way. But also, [writing] is fun.”"

"“The secret to success is being nimble, and light on your feet,”"

"“Most of my pivots come through conversations,” she said. “Maybe it is because they are giving voice to something I have already been thinking about.”"

"“Everyone who has achieved something, there have been times when they did not know if they could do it, and there were definitely times when people told them they could not do it,”"

"“It is really important to have people around you, family, friends, or someone in your life, who can back you up against the naysayers.”"

"“You have so much more agency than you realise. There will always be people saying you can’t do this, you are too old or too young, but you have a lot of power if you choose to own it.”"

"Consulting is an excellent way to learn management and strategy skills,"

"Detesto el agua tibia y los temperamentos indecisos; por eso amo y odio con llaneza y ardor, y lo que emprendo llega á la cima. Esta jira europea misma que estoy realizando, sola, cumplidos ya los cincuenta años de existencia, es manifestación comprobatoria del carácter cimentado en la sentencia shakespiriana, ser ó no ser. Si no nací en Londres, nací en el Cuzco, y me siento llena de orgullo legítimo. ¿Por qué no confesarlo? El disimulo de nuestras espontaneidades es hipocresía; yo la detesto del mismo modo que al agua tibia."

"You are made in the likeness of your ancestors. ... As we move through life, it is important to remember the wisdom of those before us. Life changes day to day."

"What keeps me up at night is that these people are siphoning all of this money—they siphon it from the government, they get benefits from the government, they get tax cuts from the government, they siphon all of this money, they siphon your wealth from you. They siphon it in wages by the fact that they don’t increase, they siphon it off, like, shrinkflation, when they act like they—they cry poor and they charge you more for less."

"Once I did that that one time, I was like, ‘oh, I feel like if I can do that I should do that because it keeps everything as raw and as, like, honest and interesting as possible"

"I can tell you this: Art can save your life. Art can absolutely save your life. I believe it from the bottom of my heart. But believe me when I tell you that entertainment will never be your salvation, alright. Art can save your life, but entertainment, entertainment by and large is escapism"

"And no one has ever escaped their chains by forgetting they were there"

"Oh it's terrifying, yeah: you come up to publication day and you suddenly realise 'right that's it, it's out in the world'. I remember when my publishers were telling me that it was starting to get on the bestseller list, and I was thinking 'Okay, well I've got a lot of family and a lot of friends, so okay that accounts for the first week'. And then I started realising that absolute strangers were gonna be reading it and...yeah it is quite terrifying actually."

"...all those other 'How To' books were just about people that knew about this thing. This is different, because he's not a bird-watcher; this is his journey into that world . . . I'd like it hardbacked and leather, because it's a lovely book. It's one you'd want to treasure."

"Hers was the first voice like hers that I had discovered in literature before. I was good at English . . . I had never come across a voice like hers before. She was a black woman from the States, and she just blew my mind..."

"The fact that he can focus so deeply on a dinner, or a conversation at a beach, or you know, the impending non-consummation of a marriage, was really wonderful. It had all the depth. But I was quite captivated by the food, the English food, and how kind of unappealing it was. It was just so banal and humdrum."

"A great deal of my fiction deals with extreme violence erupting in normal lives."

"I never decided that I would; I was just never able to stop."

"The way Doyle paints it is that the brotherhood, the Sinn Féin became the home for all these poor — you know, the woebegotten souls who were like trying to find their way."

"It's not a world that I know but I came to know something about it though the book which was good, but I see...when I look at literature, when I look at books I look at the structure of them and ... I saw a fairy tale actually, when I think about it you know the traditional princess who becomes a maid who rises to become a queen and all these mad people inbetween on that journey..."

"I have a new scarlet coat and I look like a fire engine and I don't give a damn..."

"I'm always happy because your definition of 'young" is elastic..."

"He taught me everything. He just used to say, and I'll never forget that, he said 'it's not big words and adjectives — that's boring'. And I thought 'ah yes' . . . I learned from that. Simplicity is the art of writing."

"It's typically Jamesian because in a way its an unambiguous story: you know exactly what's going on, but it creates these ambiguities of feeling in you, because you want her protected, yet you can't like the father who's protecting her..."

"...I wouldn't really be interested in writing a biography about someone who was obvious and straightforward. It's the enigma of a particular personality, I think, that drives your interest as a biographer. With someone like [John] Mulgan, someone like [Ralph] Hotere, there is a core there which is truly enigmatic, and which obviously fuels the work."

"...I have a problem with historic novels, I think that they tend to become history lessons and this book at times becomes a history lesson"

"...a lot of really bad books, like just shit books, are written with really great plots that really move along, and why should the devil have all the good tunes you know? I like a good story in a book. It's not very fashionable to say that, because people associate good stories with the kind of books that are a cop-out: books that are like bad middlebrow popular fiction. But what's bad about being entertained?"

"Part of that shorthand is the way that she works as well. I mean she's got this very reduced, very spare kind of style, which I loved. But more than anything I found it so compelling because of this fantastic unconsummated love, that really acts as a huge narrative pull."

"Writing didn't really get a look in until we had children. I made the decision that I was going to stay home and bring the kids up myself, and oddly enough that gave me the opportunity and the time to write finally. I say time very loosely there..."

"Some phrases you have to say out loud. it's like someone has poured warm milk into your skull, you know? It's just beautiful — I loved it."

"...of course it wasn't called Lord of the Flies to begin with; it was called something awful like A Cry of Children. And it took 22 goes to get the manuscript actually on the desk at Faber and Faber for someone to accept it. All these stories come out . . . the professional book reader who looked at Lord of the Flies and said 'rubbish, dull, pointless'."

"...legends are not only necessary to us, but however strong the legend, even if you try to demolish it, you can't. In fact you end up reinforcing it . . . We writers are mythmakers, whether we like it or not. The moment you write a book, you are very often adding to and sometimes creating a myth, and I've done both and I'm very happy with that."

"...what I liked about it is . . . you never know if you're nuts, you know? And he had no idea, until they started finding the bodies..."

"It was just extraordinary from the moment I started reading it. It doesn't have any chapters, and you just don't want it to stop. It's like that feeling of being a child again when you're reading a book and you honestly stay up all night reading it."

"For me, the idea that people in the past can be present, is not a very strange idea when you've had a lot of experience with people that feel that way. Being with [knowing] elders like Eruera Stirling for 20 odd years . . . he looked at the ancestors as if they were just in the next room."

"If someone was to tell me that I'd be raving on TV about a book about Diana, that's pink, [reading on] the bus, as a straight male, I'd tell you that 'you're wrong'. Let me just tell you that it's one of the most compelling books I've read!"

"I love the title, I loved it. in the same way that the stories take on extra meaning after coming after the other stories. What I love about it is the way the title 'Opportunity' takes on so much meaning coming after the novel's provocation..."

"The place is the context of the poetry. It's not that I write about the place, but the poetry comes out of my life in the place. So in that way it is tremendously important To me, and I'm sure i wouldn't be writing what I'm writing if I weren't in Bluff."

"...she's not a sentimental writer. There are times when she's as referential as a nun. At times she leaps into a comic, clownish dance. And times when she thunders like an Old Testament prophet."

"The mind of a child is a very different thing, and getting into that mind and just seeing the way the mind works...my younger daughter says 'you know if you stand on your head, you don't blink'. Now I don't know if that's true or not, but what a great line and I'm going to use that in a book that I'm writing at the moment..."

"You can read it with a perfectly straight face but kind of chuckle inwardly; that's what I like."

"Molly's from his series Dance to the Music of Time, in episode ten"

"In fact her writing reminds me of your writing actually . . . it's insightful and it's layered. And it's a bit like intellectual quicksand"

"There were very few radio stations that played [Squallor's songs], yet they were a resounding success."

"[On the television program Non è la Rai, created with Irene Ghergo and of which he was also the director] My program isn't stupid; it's television, which, apart from a few very rare well-made programs, is completely idiotic. Except that others don't say so, and I shout it out loud."

"Only frustrated people smoke too much and only lonely people are frustrated."

"I can never get a zipper to close."

"I didn't think I'd be true to a man again as long as I lived..."

"They ain’t been here long ’nough. They just barely human. Maybe not even. They suck up the world, don’t taste it."

"The intimacy of her mother’s hands and the warmth of the water lulled the Girl into a trance of sensuality she never forgot. Now the blood washing slowly down her breastbone and soaking into the floor below was like that bath—a cleansing."