Quote of the Day

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

-- Toni Morrison

Quote of the Day

Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

-- Toni Morrison, Beloved

Quote of the Day

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

-- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Quote of the Day

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

-- Toni Morrison

Quote of the Day

My philosophy is very simple: If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just -- you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something.  Start trouble.

-- Rep. John Lewis

Quote of the Day

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes -- including you.

-- Anne Lamott

Quote of the Day

The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom.  Those have always been where creative ideas come from.

-- Lynda Barry

Quote of the Day

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness.  Without this housecleaning, we cannot begin to see.  Unless we see, we cannot think.

-- Thomas Merton

Quote of the Day

What's clear is that it's healthiest if we make a daily appointment to disconnect from the world so that we can connect with ourselves.  Kids, jobs, sleep, and a thousand other things will get in the way, but we have to find our own sacred space, our own sacred time.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 43

Quote of the Day

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you.  This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.  This is the place of creative incubation.  At first you may find that nothing happens there.  But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Quote of the Day

Silence and solitude are crucial [to think and practice your art].  Our modern world of push notifications, 24/7 news cycles, and constant contact is almost completely inhospitable to the kind of retreat artists must make in order to focus deeply on their work.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 39

Quote of the Day

Creativity is about connection -- you must be connected to others in order to be inspired and share your own work -- but it is also about disconnection.  You must retreat from the world long enough to think, practice your art, and bring forth something worth sharing with others.  You must play a little hide-and-seek in order to produce something worth being found.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 39