Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the...

As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~ Phot...

The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don't expect. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyso...

Pets don't do the human things of guilt and anger and recrimination that we do. They come and go with great acceptance. ~ Jon K...

It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds. ~ Aesop ~ Illustration from Three Hundred Aesop's Fables.

I can't picture going to a beach, or anywhere on vacation, without a couple of books as companions. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin ~ Illustrati...

In the long run even a dog will compromise with the cat. ~ Hungarian proverb ~ Photo by Leslie Jones, courtesy Boston Public Library .

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers--there always were. Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing ...

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry. ~ Philip Levine ~

Wild animals would not stay in a country where there were so many people. Pa did not like to stay, either. He liked a country where the ...

Outside museums, in noisy public squares, people look at people. Inside museums, we leave that realm and enter what might be called the gro...

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. ~ Willa Cather ~ Cather is buried here in N...

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. ~ George Washington ~

As a child I parleyed with animals, stuffed and real. Making my kitten pilot of a boot, I guided from one end of a string the dizzy fl...

Vintage Valentine courtesy Dave .

In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to p...

Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the o...

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. ~ Christopher Morley ~

One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day. ~ Susan Orlean ~ Photo by Jac...

You can't serve up hearts like cherries jubilee. ~ Leonard Bailey ~ [Interesting quote! I thought it a rather appropriate quote for...

The breeze and the dawn will flourish again when you return, as if beneath your step. Between flowers and sills the cats will know....

Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; love more, and all good things will be yours. ~ ...

Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry. ~ Jack Kerouac ~ Photo by Diamondmagna, courtesy Wikimedi...

I never doubted my ability, but when you hear all your life you're inferior, it makes you wonder if the other guys have something you...

Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lon...

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. ~ Sun Tzu ~ Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons .

Your closet needs to be a place of joy and celebration of who are you now--not who you were. ~ Stacy London ~ I couldn't resist this...

It doesn't do to be sentimental about cats; the best ones don't respect you for it. ~ Susan Howatch ~ Painting by Suz...

As you move up in income level you get more influence. When you get to the very top, and here the Occupy movement was a little misleading--i...

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not...

I think winter wear is communal. You get some gloves and a scarf from a lost-and-found box, wash them, wear them for a while until you lose...

A food delivery bicycle is not an emergency vehicle. ~ Bill de Blasio ~

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood. ~ Andy Goldsworthy ~ Photo courtesy Library of Congress .

Immortality is a by-product of good work. ~ Mel Brooks ~ Photo by Towpilot courtesy Wikipedia .

And as the dragon came out of the dungeon, following Johnnie and Tina into the bright gold and blue of their wedding day, he blinked his eye...

Principles are like prayers--noble, of course, but rather awkward at a party. ~ Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham (played by Maggie Sm...

That’s my hope, that my work is comforting. At its best, finally, poetry brings us comfort. ~ Susan Howe ~ Illustration courtesy...

The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossi...

I fell in love with reading when I was allowed to choose whatever books I wanted to check out of the library. I was around nine years old w...

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, "no, I went to films." ~ Quentin Tarantino ~

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns o...

World's turned queer somehow: all white, no smell. Well, here inside it's still familiar. He'll go to sleep until it p...

When I see a woman who has lost weight, I say, "You look terrific." When I see a woman who has quit dieting and embraced her cur...

Poetry is the only history we have of human emotions. Most history books, what we call history books, are stories of battles and treaties, ...

No one forces me, or any other writer, to sell a film option on the books. If you don't want to run the risk that the filmmakers may ada...

Every species becomes extinct; at some point, we will go extinct. The question is, as Homo sapiens, are we going to be able to adapt to the ...

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. ~ Mark Twain ~ Illustration courtesy Library of Congress .

For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea ...

The Chinese plate looked very blue, And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!" But the gingham dog and the calico cat Wallowed t...

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like t...

Art is long, and Time is fleeting... ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~ Image courtesy openclipart .

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting. ~ Abraham Maslow ~ Photo by Miia "Myrtti" Ranta, courtesy Wiki...

Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter. ~ James A. Garfield ~ Photo by Ross Burton .

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented. ...

A brand-spanking new episode of Henri!

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape--into different cou...

The artist in me cries out for design. ~ Robert Frost ~

Postcard courtesy Dave .

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time. ~ Voltaire ~ Illustration courtesy Wikimedia Commons .

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It w...

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been ...

Every life should have nine cats. ~ Author unknown ~ Illustration by Louis Wain courtesy Library of Congress .

Laws do not constrain freedom; they enable it. Look at civil rights. Without laws none of us are free. ~ Margot Livesey ~

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. ~ Walt Whitman ~

Spend all you have for loveliness, Buy it and never count the cost; ~ Sara Teasdale from "Barter" ~ "Christmas Morning...

Walking on water? Ninja magnificence!

If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather t...

Oh who can tell the range of joy Or set the bounds of beauty? ~ Sara Teasdale from "A Winter Bluejay" ~ Phot...