Quotes About Aspiration

You'll never really be great unless you aim high.

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.

p. 62 ...meditation… exposes a contradiction between the sort of person we wish to be and the kind of person we are. Restlessness and lethargy are ways of evading the discomfort of this contradiction.

Aspiration is as much a bodily longing as an intellectual desire; appreciation as much a passion as a preference; conviction as much an intuition as a rational conclusion. Irrespective of the purpose to which we are committed, when such feelings are aroused, life is infused with meaning.

My heart weighs heavy from all of the books I have not yet written

The public could be made to want anything, if it were sold to them the right way. But one thing the public did seem to want in 1880 was to emulate high society and the way high society lived. Very well. The Dakota would provide such emulation.

I have decided that maybe I want to write when I grow up. I just don't know what I would write.

It's nice to have things to look forward to.

I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure that she has a better life than you do.

she went home and spent the rest of the day feeling possible.

I always wanted to be on a sports team like that. I'm not sure why, but I always thought it would be fun to have "glory days".

And what my brother's face will look like on a football card, or what it will look like if it is never on a football card.

I read on the back cover that the author was born in Russia and came to America when she was young. She barely spoke English, but she wanted to be a great writer. I thought that was very admirable, so I sat down and tried to write a story. Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight. That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.

XXVI There was set before me a mighty hill, And long days I climbed Through regions of snow. When I had before me the summit-view, It seemed my labor Had been to see gardens Lying at impossible distances.

A man saw a ball of gold in the sky; He climbed for it, And eventually he achieved it -- It was clay. Now this is the strange part: When the man went to the earth And looked again, Lo, there was the ball of gold. Now this is the strange part: It was a ball of gold. Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.

Don't do it," the patient said. "Even if she wants it, don't let her do it. I used to be a model. You don't want your kid to be a model.

We don't stop talking about how the world might be better just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it.

Goodness me. You don't ask for the moon, do you?" "Oh, what a good idea! The moon. Yes, I'd love the moon, please. That will be all. I'll never ask for anything ever again ever.

There should be no boundary to human endeavor.

Art should be a place of hope.

You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think--I did--that God put you on earth to blow your father away.

Disquiet and desire. What you want and what you're scared to try for. Where you've been and where you want to go. Something in a rock-and-roll song about wanting the girl, the car, the place to stand and be. Oh please God can you dig it.