...my definition of magic in the human personality, in fiction and in poetry, is the ultimate level of attentiveness. ~ Jim Harrison ~

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of offi...

The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt. ~ Henri Car...

...if we failed, we failed together and to me that's not failing at all. ~ Kermit the Frog ~

Kittens will meow to their mothers, but as they mature, they typically quit using this sound to communicate with other cats. Often, adult d...

Listen, even if 97% of scientists turned out to be wrong, where is the harm in cleaning up our environment? What could it hurt to conserve ...

In a funny way, poems are suited to modern life. They're short, they're intense. Nobody has time to read a 700-page book. People ...

...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. ~ Harp...

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. ~ Michelangelo ~

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly bette...

Lick your whiskers, Smooth your fur, Prick up your ears And purr, purr, purr. ~ Eve Merriam from "Cat's Tongue" ~

The point of play is that it has no point. ~ Alfie Kohn ~

...I just sit there under the floor lamp early in the morning and work and see what happens. Nine days out of 10, nothing good comes of it...

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book....

The countryside and the farm itself are so important to me; I can't even visualize being a poet without living here, even though I was a...

Ice is the one thing in our world that went from an agricultural product to being manufactured. ~ Alton Brown ~ Photo by Social_Stratifi...

Our cat treads my bed, Pushing my spread to a heap for his sleep, Punching sheets, stretching his tailbone up tall-- That it's me und...

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples. ~ ...

Then drive to-day’s sorrow away till to-morrow, And then put it off till the next one. ~ Charles Dickens from "Squire Norton’s Song...

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure--it is, after all, what everybody does all the time. ~ Susanna Clarke from ...

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never...

I think you should be serious about what you do because this is it. This is the only life you've got. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman ~

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees. ~ George Eliot ~ Photo by audreyjm529 .

...sometimes a drastic accident is required... ~ Henri Le Chat Noir ~

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson ~

They ask me why I live in the green mountains. I smile and don't reply; my heart's at ease. ~ Li Bai from "Question and Answer...

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. ~ Confucius ~ Photo by Elmer B. Domingo .

I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion...

To me, the smell of fresh-made coffee is one of the greatest inventions. ~ Hugh Jackman ~

Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face. ~ Dave Barry ~

We’d attribute the NRA’s favorite rock ‘n’ roller’s most recent rant to a bad case of Cat Scratch Fever, but that would be an insult to ...

The door of success is marked "push" and "pull." ~ Yiddish proverb ~ Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

It's not for me--religion. It seems like a redundancy for a poet. ~ May Swenson ~

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart, who looks at her watch. ~ James Beard ~ Photo courtesy Oregon Blue Book .

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say--it's revealed to you as you say it. ~ Aaron Siskind ~

The Oscar sits on some shelf above my desk. If there was an earthquake, I could actually be killed by my own Academy Award. ~ Helen Hunt ~

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~ LB...

The bird-watching bandit on needle-point paws ~ J. Patrick Lewis from "A Tomcat Is" ~ Photo by A. Davey .

The world is a thing of wonder that requires no faith, but only alert senses, to appreciate. ~ Jeffrey Tayler ~ Photo © Diane Mayr, all...

Maybe I should write a poem about all the people who think they know what I should be writing poems about. ~ Billy Collins from "Th...

Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the t...

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill. ~ W. So...

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. ~ John Steinbeck ~

I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It...

Posted on George Takei's Facebook page .

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin ~ ...

Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis. ~ Amiri Baraka ~ Rest in peace, Amiri Baraka . Photo courtesy Ami...

I actually find a lot of parallels in jazz and cartooning. ~ Gary Larson ~

January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow. ~ Sara Coleridge ~

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own? ~ P.L. Travers from Mary Poppins ~

With their pink and crimson plumage, long legs and necks, and strongly hooked bills, flamingos cannot be mistaken for any other type of bird...

The steps are a blanched slope, Up which, with feeble hope, A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;    And we take him in. ~ Thomas Hardy ...

If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it. ~ Lucy Larcom ~ KK: it is very cold, today--at least in the NH part of the w...

Haiku is short and small, but is really like a deep pond. ~ Kuniharu Shimizu ~ I took the photo in Derry, NH, on a walk along the rail ...

You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? ...

Postcard courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery .

What might we be doing, thinking, feeling about if we didn't think about body image, ever? ~ Caroline Knapp ~ Image courtesy o...

Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is ...

CISCIS afflicts one in three cats. ~ Paul Klusman ~

Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy fig...

An artwork must challenge us with questions not soothe us with simple answers. Public art must be more than mere decorative embellishment,...

Friendship with one's self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world. ~ Eleanor Roosev...