The Work Is Its Own Reward

There is only one happiness in writing, the hourly enchantment of the writing itself, for then you are living in your dream.

~ Alice Brown ~

Poetry Friday

And even a great poet's divinest thought
Is coloured by the world he knows and sees.

~ Amy Lowell from "The Boston Atheneum" ~

Happy Earth Day!

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

~ E. B. White ~

Photo by Chalkie CC

KK's One Thousandth Quote!

The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach, however small.

~ Adlai E. Stevenson ~

I hope I haven't repeated any in the first 1,000! Fortunately new quotes come along on a daily basis. --KK

R.I.P. John Schoenherr

Painting was my initial impetus, I just got sidetracked into illustration by things like mortgages and children. Not a bad way to prostitute yourself.

~ John Schoenherr ~

But Let's Try!

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.

~ Tom Brokaw ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Drowsing, they take the noble attitude of a great sphinx, who, in a desert land, sleeps always, dreaming dreams that have no end.

~ Charles Baudelaire ~

Who's That Knocking at the Door?

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~

Poetry Friday

One use of a journal or notebook is to jumpstart the mind. But another purpose, equally important, is to provide a place to relax, to settle into a comfortable writing stride.

~ Ralph Fletcher ~

Faultless Logic

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.

~ Oscar Wilde ~




Photo by Scorpions and Centaurs

This Spring is a Sumptuous Watercolor!

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.

~ Stanley Horowitz ~



Image courtesy Winslow-Homer.com

Like a Duck...

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

~ Michael Caine ~

Photo by Mr. Ducke

A Chihuahua to His Bones!

"Everyone knows
From my big ears to my toes,
I'm not a Siamese cat.
I'm Skippyjonjones,
A Chihuahua to my bones.
And that's what I think about that."

from Skippyjon Jones in the Dog-House by Judy Schachner

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.

~ William S. Burroughs ~

Complicated, Yet Not

Just as white light consists of colored rays, so reverence for life contains all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy, peacefulness and power to forgive.

~ Albert Schweitzer ~

Photo by Ilikethenight

Poetry Friday

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

~ Wendell Berry from "The Silence"~


Photo by Wilson (Army Gal)

Bigger Doesn't Always Mean Better!

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

That being said, you really should complete your census form and send it back! --KK

A Public Library Fan!

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.

~ Keith Richards (yes, THAT Keith Richards!) ~

Practice + Persistence = Perfection

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

~ Martha Graham ~





Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-116601]

Keepin' Busy

Women like to sit down with trouble--as if it were knitting.

~ Ellen Glasgow ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Image courtesy riptheskull

On This Bee-You-Tee-Ful Spring Day!

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

~ Oscar Wilde ~

Poetry Friday

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve

~ A.E. Stallings from "Fairy-tale Logic" ~

A Big Ouchie!

Photo by whl.travel
When hunting, Komodo dragons rely on camouflage and patience, lying in wait for passing prey. When a victim ambles by, the dragon springs, using its powerful legs, sharp claws and serrated, shark-like teeth to eviscerate its prey.
~ from National Geographic ~

We Keep Waiting!

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

How Well Do You Know Your Neighbors?

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien ~

The Beast Is Within Us

The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath.

~ W. C. Fields ~




Photo by Angela7Dreams

I Love This!

Art is the only proof we have of the existence of the soul.

~ Anonymous ~





If anyone knows who the author of this quote is, I would love to give him/her credit. --KK

Poetry Friday

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

~ John Ciardi ~

I Got a Kick Out of It, Too!

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

~ Jim Harrison ~

Remember, It's the Standing Up That Counts!

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
~ Japanese proverb ~

Some of the Best Writing Advice Ever

I try to leave out the parts that people skip.

~ Elmore Leonard ~

A Quote About Quotes

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

~ Orson Welles ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Most beds sleep up to six cats. Ten cats without the owner.

~ Stephen Baker ~


Photo by Gattou/Lucie/..Hard to catch up! :o(

Let's Get It Done!

And in just a few days, a century-long struggle will culminate in a historic vote. We’ve had historic votes before. We had a historic vote to put Social Security in place to make sure that our elderly did not live out their golden years in poverty. We had a historic vote in civil rights to make sure that everybody was equal under the law. As messy as this process is, as frustrating as this process is, as ugly as this process can be, when we have faced such decisions in our past, this nation, time and time again, has chosen to extend its promise to more of its people.

~ President Barack Obama in a speech given March 19, 2010 ~

Image from www.whitehouse.gov

Poetry Friday

The most common Romantic reaction to avian sightings is jealousy. The poet envies the spiritual and imaginative liberation suggested by bird flight, and birdsong leaves him with the desire to sing as naturally and as beautifully in his own lyric.

~ Billy Collins from the introduction to Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds ~

You Mean We Do It to Ourselves?

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

For the good are always the merry,
Save for an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance.

~ William Butler Yeats from "The Fiddler of Dooney" ~

Theft

When the thief has stolen from a thief, God laughs in heaven.

~ Armenian proverb ~

Poetry (Not on a Friday!)

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

~ Carl Sandburg ~







Photo by Bermudi

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel very peculiar. I feel like I've just got to bite a cat! I feel like if I don't bite a cat before sundown, I'll go crazy! But then I just take a deep breath and forget about it. That's what is known as real maturity.

~ Snoopy ~

Photo by Sarah Ross Photography

Growing Young

It takes a long time to become young.

~ Pablo Picasso ~

Image courtesy Michael Dawes

Poetry Friday

A "Western Haiku" need not concern itself with the seventeen syllables since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabic Japanese. I propose that the "Western Haiku" simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language.

~ Jack Kerouac ~

He Should Know...

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

~ Douglas MacArthur ~

Today We Honor the WASP With Congressional Gold Medals

...more than 25,000 American women applied for training, but only 1,830 were accepted and took the oath;

~ From Public Law 111-40 111th Congress ~

Image courtesy Women Airforce Service Pilots - Remembered by Those Who Knew Them

Congratulations Kathryn Bigelow

What’s next? Good question. I hope something soon. Actually, I’m working on a few things. Who knows what will finally materialize? But once you embark on a project that is both topical and relevant, I suppose it sets a new bar. So I’m definitely inclined toward that.

~ Kathryn Bigelow ~

Let's Live!

To live is to dance, to dance is to live.

~ Snoopy ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

~ Stephen Wright ~

Photo courtesy of Patrick Girouard Thanks, Patrick!

Start Stirring!

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

~ Edward Abbey ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry Out Loud’s ultimate test is the frightening ordeal of up front public performance, which goes far beyond accurate recollection, spoken or written, to embrace the arts of the orator and the actor. Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan were eloquent performers of poetry, for example, and so was the great French actress, Sarah Bernhardt, who won her first important audition by dramatically reciting the French national anthem.

~ Robert Oliphant ~

The Worst Kind of Ghost!

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

~ Frederic Chopin ~


Photo by Patrick f

Translation

Translation is at best an echo.

~ George Borrow ~

When the Majority Doesn't Rule

...before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

~ Harper Lee from To Kill a Mockingbird ~




Photo courtesy DML East Branch

Sage Advice

Don't look back when you are walking along the edge of a wall.

~ Chinese proverb ~

Photo by Christopher Chan

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The dog may be wonderful prose, but only the cat is poetry.

~ French proverb ~

A True Story

41 hours without internet, and I've lived to tell the tale!

~ KK ~

State Of Emergency Declared After Violent Storm
Power Restoration Could Take Days, Officials Say

Poetry Friday

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

~ Robert Frost from "Desert Places" ~

Figure Skating

Figure skating is an amazing ride. It takes you from feeling like the lowest scum in the pond, like two hours ago. And now I feel like a flower growing out of the pond.

~ Johnny Weir ~

Photo from Vancouver2010

Tricky...

What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.

~ Henry A. Wallace ~

Is To!

Curling is not a sport. I called my grandmother and told her she could win a gold medal because they have dusting in the Olympics now.

~ Charles Barkley ~


Photo by LeeLeFever

And Delightful to Hear It Told!

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

~ Emily Dickinson ~