Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all,...

Sometimes I think all the best poems have been written already, and no one has time to read them, so why try to write more? ~ Lin...

Our writers are full of cliches just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you sus...

I've always taken The Wizard of Oz very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life t...

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula. ~ Bela Lugosi ~ Photo courtesy Wikipedia .

There are countless artists whose shoes I am not worthy to polish--whose prints would not pay the printer. The question of judgment is a ...

Biting and clawing is a form of "love mauling." The more pain they deal out, the more they are trying to tell you that they ...

...great numbers of wild geese are passing to the south, but their flight is too high for us to procure any of them. ~ Meriwether Lewis ~...

...in poetry our motives are utterly similar to those who made cave paintings or petroglyphs... ~ Jim Harrison ~

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 wh...

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope. ~ Edith Wharton ~ Poster courtesy Library of Congress .

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult han...

The history of exploration has never been driven by exploration. But Columbus himself was a discoverer. So was Magellan. But the people ...

© 2014, Michelle Porucznik .

If there is one thing that my brother’s collection has taught me, it is that guns outlive their owners. These hundreds of millions of guns w...

Poetry is sort of me looking for myself. ~ Chastity Hale ~

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. ~ James Joyce ~

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoth...

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is s...

Veterinarians have long known the benefits of adding a little canned pumpkin to a pet's diet regularly. ~ Carol McConnell ~ "M...

The only business protected from government by our Constitution is the media--their right of free speech based in the First Amendment. Just ...

~ From The Book of Nonsense (1870), written and illustrated by Edward Lear ~

Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining i...

Banning books is just another form of bullying. It's all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and...

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ~ Confucius ~

Why should pirates be any different from regular cat owners? Cats will walk the plank only if they WANT to. Bliss by Harry Bliss, © 201...

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~ Mark Twain ~ Photo courtesy Wikimedia .

The interesting thing is that you don't often meet a poet who doesn't have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of the...

The only thing better than singing is more singing. ~ Ella Fitzgerald ~

Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. ~ Arnold Lobel ~ Illustration from St. Nicholas Magazine (187...

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. ~ Madeleine L'Engle ~

No longer ought we to be called upon to be particeps criminis with men to the extent of being compelled to pay taxes which are largely used ...

~ Henri, le Chat Noir ~ Without the benefit of opposable thumbs he manages to post to Facebook a few times each week. Incroyable! --KK ...

Massive inequality is incompatible with robust democracy. Today, in the United States, the top 1% is taking home more than 20% of total inc...

But that he knows in singing not to sing . ~ Robert Frost from "The Oven Bird" ~ Illustration by Louis Agassiz Fuertes from Na...

Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and c...

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them. ~ P. G. Wodehouse ~ Photo courtesy ...

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine p...

Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals "love" them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal li...

My little mother,                       little kitten, be patient, I’m trying, it’s for you I’m opening this can of worms, for you I’m ...

Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of nature--just as it’s irrelevant to the question of whether ...

What is poetry which does not save nations or people? ~ Czeslaw Milosz ~ Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons .

Color is a power which directly influences the soul. ~ Wassily Kandinsky ~ "Colorful Life" (1907) courtesy The Athenaeum .

My generation were diners stuffing ourselves senseless at the Restaurant of the Earth’s Riches knowing--while denying--that we’d be doing a ...

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so sh...

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. ~ Theodore Roosevelt ~ Photo courtesy...

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy. ~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

I'm sorry I don't know the source of this. It was shared on Patricia Polacco's Facebook page , and it had been sent to her by ...

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance. ~ Anne Sexton ~

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~ Abraham Lincoln ~ Photo courtesy Tennessee State Library and Archives .

Rice feeds the body, books feed the mind, beauty feeds the soul. ~ Imelda Marcos ~ The beautifully designed book above seems to have ach...

One of the mistakes I made was thinking chickens and penguins could sing, just like all the other animals in the "Muppets." But it...

When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, we literally make way for inspiration and "good, orderly direction" to enter. ...

I'm running out of kat kwotes, but I'll never run out of cat videos!

Those who willingly reject reality should never have the chance to shape it. ~ Chad R. MacDonald ~

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. ~ Charles Simic ~ Photo from NH Poetr...

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles. ~ Doug Larson ~ Ph...

Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals. ~ Aldo Leopold ~ Phot...

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~

The poem, "Cat!" by Eleanor Farjeon, can be found here .

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved ...

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day. ~ Samuel Beckett ~ "Creation of the ...

Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentic...