Austin Kleon:

In the end, merely imitating your heroes is not flattering them.  Transforming their work into something of your own is how you flatter them.  Adding something to the world that only you can add.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 41

Seth Godin:

Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn't do.  If you lived in that world, what would you do?  Go.  Do that.

Poke the Box, p. 2

Hugh MacLeod:

All points are starting points.

Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear, p. 3

William Burroughs:

Say it again: "Poetry is for everyone."  Poetry is a place and it is free to all...

Annie Dillard:

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?  Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?  Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms?

The Writing Life, p. 72

Rachel Held Evans:

I left the church because sometimes it felt like a cult, or a country club, and I wasn't sure which was worse.

"15 Reasons I Left Church"

Frank Schaeffer:

Many Evangelical leaders of antigay initiatives have turned out to be closeted gay men.

Sex, Mom, and God, p. 67

Austin Kleon:

The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use -- do the work you want to see done.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 48

Henry James:

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.

Hugh MacLeod:

A generation ago, an artist needed New York.  Now an artist just needs the Internet.

Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear, p. 17

Mark Twain:

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Annie Dillard:

Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it?

The Writing Life, p. 72

Craig Damrauer:

Modern art = I could do that + Yeah, but you didn't.

Frank Schaeffer:

Rather than rethink their beliefs, conservative religionists decided to renounce secular higher eduction and denounce it as "elitist."  Thus, to be uninformed, even willfully and proudly stupid, came to be considered a Godly virtue.

Sex, Mom, and God, p. 179-180

Austin Kleon:

If I'd waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started "being creative," well, I'd still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things.  In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing work that we figure out who were are.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 27

Ricky Martin:

With time I have learned that life has a funny way of shaking me around when I need it most.  In that moment, I don't always understand it, and often resist it, when in reality I have learned that what I need to do is open myself up to the challenges that lie ahead -- because it is these very challenges that allow me to grow, learn, and change.

Me, p. 95

Hugh MacLeod:

Having a blog, a voice, having my own media, utterly changed my life.  Suddenly my career as a cartoonist wasn't dependent on other people: the "gatekeepers" -- publishers, editors, Hollywood executives, etc., etc.

Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear, p. 1

Edward Tufte:

I have stared long enough at the glowing flat rectangles of computer screens.  Let us give more time for doing things in the real world...plant a plant, walk the dogs, read a real book, go to the opera.

Annie Dillard:

Write as if you were dying.  At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients.  That is, after all, the case.

The Writing Life, p. 68

Amy to perform at Women's Work

Amy will be performing some of her poetry this Sunday at Nashville's sixth annual Women's Work festival. Come and enjoy an afternoon of original poetry and spoken word presented by wonderful women wordsmiths!

Sunday, May 13th, at 2:30 p.m.
Z. Alexander Looby Theater
Looby Branch Library
2301 Rosa L. Parks Blvd.
Nashville, TN
$5

For more information or to purchase tickets in advance, please visit the Tennessee Women's Theater Project.

Frank Schaeffer:

As Rupert Murdoch, Fox News, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Robert George, and others discovered, selling perpetual anger (not to mention self-pity and a sense of outraged victimhood) to the proudly misinformed leads to fortune.

Sex, Mom, and God, p. 142

Austin Kleon:

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away.

Steal Like an Artist, p. 20

Ricky Martin:

To make decisions that represent significant change in one's life, we must go through many processes of destabilization, and very often we opt to stay where we are most comfortable.  And that's how life goes on.  But if we dare to embark on the most difficult option, we come to realize that what exists on the other side is a world of freedom, peace, and endless tranquility.

Me, p. 277

Jessica Hische:

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.

Julian Barnes:

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer.  Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

Flaubert's Parrot

Annie Dillard:

Only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature.

The Writing Life, p. 69