Ask Quotes (page 69)
You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary? it's always imaginary? world in which I would like to live.(Interview, The Paris Review)
William S. Burroughs
Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.
Joss Whedon
If one's intellectual equipment was not great, one's spiritual experience not deep, the result of doing one's very best could only seem very lightweight in comparison with the effort involved. But perhaps that was not important. The mysterious power that commanded men appeared to him to ask of them only obedience and the maximum of effort and to remain curiously indifferent as to the results.
Elizabeth Goudge
Hope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm. That could abash the little bird. That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land. And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson
Have you forgiven me?' I asked.
'How can I say I have, when I never had anything to forgive?'
'Well then, I must go unforgiven for I cannot forgive myself.' I said.
'O Mrs. Percivale! If you think how the world is flooded with
forgiveness, you will just dip in your cup, and take what you want.
George MacDonald