Vincent Van Gogh:

The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feeling.

Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh

Philip Yancey:

I write (books) to resolve things that are bothering me, things I don't have answers to.

PhilipYancey.com

Anne Lamott:

I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent.

Bird by Bird, p. 99

Jean Renoir:

She will always prefer a scandal to a lie.

of Ingrid Bergman

Madeleine L'Engle:

...when the words mean even more than the writer knew they meant, then the writer has been listening.

Walking on Water, p. 15

Anne Lamott:

The writer is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in "The Farmer in the Dell" standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes.

Bird by Bird, p. 97

Philip Yancey:

I became a writer, I feel certain, in an attempt to reclaim words that had been tarnished by graceless Christians.

What's So Amazing About Grace?, p. 42

Springing Forward

This morning I attended The Council for the Written Word's spring fiction workshop, featuring author Susan Gregg Gilmore. Her first novel, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, even captured this mostly-non-fiction reader.