“life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one”

“Don’t use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don’t want you to be stuck with your own life. It’s too little.”

“The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead”

“t smells in. Let the smell of hot tarmac in the summer remind you of a meal you ate the first time you landed in a hot place, when the ground smelled like it was melting. Let the smell of salt remind you of a paper basket of fried clams you ate once, squeezing them with lemon as you walked on a boardwalk. Let it reach your deeper interest. When you smell the sea, and remember the basket of hot fried clams, and the sound of skee-balls knocking against each other, let it help you love what food can do, which is to tie this moment to that one. Then something about the wind off the sea will have settled in your mind, and carried the fried clams and squeeze of a lemon with it.”

“There comes a time when every life goes off course, when you must choose a direction. Will you fight to stay on path? Will others tell you who you are, or will you label yourself? Will you face your greatest fear bravely? Or will you succumb to the darkness in your soul? Will you be haunted by your choice? Or will you embrace your new path? Each morning you choose to move forward or simply give up."”

“In the school of success, information is the greatest asset. The more you read, the more you discover, the more you discover, the more you recover and the better your life become.”

“I think it's degrading of you, Flora,' cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. 'Do you truly mean that you don't ever want to work at anything?'Her friend replied after some thought: 'Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as "Persuasion", but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say "Collecting material." No one can object to that. Besides, I shall be.'Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval.'If you ask me,' continued Flora, 'I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable around her, and so do I. You see Mary,' - and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about - 'unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes.”