John Cleese:

We don't know where we get our ideas from.  What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.

Frank Schaeffer:

I think that the best argument for God's existence is that humans long for meaning.

Sex, Mom, and God, p. 88

Austin Kleon:

Always be reading.  Go to the library.  There's magic in being surrounded by books.  Get lost in the stacks.  Read bibliographies.  It's not the book you start with, it's the book that book leads you to.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 20

Ricky Martin:

As Pablo Picasso said, it takes a long time to be young.  He was right.  It takes a long time to renounce the codes of society, your faith, the laws of your home, and the laws of your country.  It takes a long time to throw out all those social codes that have limited who you are, based on what has been dictated to you.

Me, p. 291

Anne Truitt:

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity.

Andy Baio:

Carving out a space for yourself online, somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work, is still one of the best possible investments you can make with your time.  It's why, after ten years, my first response to anyone just getting started online is to start, and maintain, a blog.

Annie Dillard:

Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands?  Because it is up to you ... You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment. 

The Writing Life, p. 67-68

Salvador Dali:

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Frank Schaeffer:

Remember, by the time the writers of the New Testament were remembering forty, fifty, sixty years later what Jesus had said, they were also building a self-interested organization based on His life.  They were settling disputes and splits among themselves.

Sex, Mom, and God, p. 85

Austin Kleon:

School is one thing.  Education is another.  The two don't always overlap.  Whether you're in school or not, it's always your job to get yourself an education.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 19

Ricky Martin:

Every day begins like a blank chalkboard, on which each one of us can write the poem of our present and our dreams for the future.

Me, p. 292

Misty Irons:

The only way I know how to be a Christian without getting caught up in some of the disturbing trends of evangelicalism today is by not listening to Christian radio or watching Christian television, not becoming too avid a follower of any one Christian blog, and being careful about any book I read from an evangelical publisher. It's sad to say, but I find it's hard enough to hear the voice of God in the Scriptures and discern the leading of his Holy Spirit without also receiving a lot of noise and interference from these other outside sources.

"A fence around the cross"

Dorothy Parker:

Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

Annie Dillard:

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend.  During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders.  I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

The Writing Life, p. 52

John Waters:

Nothing is more important than an unread library.

Jennifer Wright Knust:

The Bible exceeds whatever limits contemporary "family values" campaigns attempt to place upon it.

Unprotected Texts, p. 33

Austin Kleon:

The great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can't refuse you as an apprentice.  You can learn whatever you want from them.  They left their lesson plans in their work.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 17

Ricky Martin:

Instead of thinking, "I am different from them," try saying, "They are different from me."

Me, p. 289

Frank Schaeffer:

It was as if my mother were struggling to humanize the 5,000-year-old tradition that had consumed whole races in endless war and had inspired collective intellectual suicide by countless Jews and Christians who denied their brains so that they wouldn't put The-God-Of-The-Bible in a bad light by questioning the book that "described" Him.

Sex, Mom, and God, p. 91

Maya Angelou:

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning "Good morning" at total strangers.

Annie Dillard:

Remarkably material also is the writer's attempt to control his own energies so he can work.  He must be sufficiently excited to rouse himself to the task at hand, and not so excited he cannot sit down to it.

The Writing Life, p. 46

RZA:

Whether I went to school or not, I would always study.

Jennifer Wright Knust:

The Bible is complicated enough, ancient enough, and flexible enough to support an almost endless set of interpretive agendas.  That's why abolitionists could find inspiration in the Bible's pages despite centuries of biblically sanctioned argumentation in favor of the enslavement of fellow human beings.

Unprotected Texts, p. 21

Austin Kleon:

Seeing yourself as part of a creative lineage will help you feel less alone as you start making your own stuff.  I hang pictures of my favorite artists in my studio.  They're like friendly ghosts.  I can almost feel them pushing me forward as I'm hunched over my desk.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 17

Ricky Martin:

I would be lying if I said the opinions of others have no importance in my life -- of course they do -- but I cannot let them define the way I see myself, making me feel less or more than what I am.  What you think of me is not my reality, but instead your own.

Me, p. 275-276

Frank Schaeffer:

I trust the Love that I see in my grandchildren's eyes as the true witness of God more than anything written in any book.

Sex, Mom, and God, p. 88

Alfred Hitchcock:

Hatred is wasted energy.

Annie Dillard:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

The Writing Life, p. 32

John Ruskin:

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

Jennifer Wright Knust:

The Bible does not offer a systematic set of teachings or a single sexual code, but it does reveal sometimes conflicting attempts on the part of people and groups to define sexual morality, and to do so in the name of God.

Unprotected Texts, p. 17