Quotes About Dedication

You begin to string words together like beads to tell a story. You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days—listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off.

Do it every day for a while," my father kept saying. "Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.

There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.

They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You'll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them.

day by day you have to give the work before you all the best stuff you have, not saving up for later projects. If you give freely, there will always be more.

If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don't ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately.

To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care.

I know a person with a Ph.D. who goes to a church based on Star Wars: May the force be with you.

This is parenting on steroids.

I encourage my students at times like these to get one page of anything written, three hundred words of memories or dreams or stream of consciousness on how much they hate writing—just for the hell of it, just to keep their fingers from becoming too arthritic, just because they have made a commitment to try to write three hundred words every day. Then, on bad days and weeks, let things go at that.

I've managed to get some work done nearly every day of my adult life, without impressive financial success.

I've managed to get some work done nearly every day of my adult life, without impressive financial success. Yet I would do it all over again in a hot second, mistakes and doldrums and breakdowns and all. Sometimes I could not tell you exactly why, especially when it feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems.

Your three-year-old and your work in progress teach you to give. They teach you to get out of yourself and become a person for someone else. This is probably the secret to happiness. So that's one reason to write. Your child and your work hold you hostage, suck you dry, ruin your sleep, mess with your head, treat you like dirt, and then you discover they've given you that gold nugget you were looking for all along.

What has to be done can scarcely be termed heroic!" Master

None of my family is good at being patient. It's why we all become doctors.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

What release to write so that one forgets oneself, forgets one's companion, forgets where one is or what one is going to do next--to be drenched in work as one is drenched in sleep or the sea.

what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.

What a waste of the essence of a man that he should never give enough of himself to any cause, that he should always hear that passive, cowardly voice uppermost which counts the cost and puts caution first. One would grow old and die with the power of one's soul untasted.

to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What

to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What a waste of the essence of a man that he should never give enough of himself to any cause, that he should always hear that passive, cowardly voice uppermost which counts the cost and puts caution first. One would grow old and die with the power of one's soul untasted.

She knows what matters and what doesn't,' she answered, choosing her words carefully. 'She remembers what she receives, but never what she gives. She doesn't hold grudges, and if she thinks something is funny she will laugh, whether it is the done thing or not. She loves the opera, and gorgeous clothes. She is honest when it is fashionable not to be, but she is never unnecessarily unkind. And she will fight to the death for a cause she believes in.

I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I'll dedicate it to you because you're the first person who ever made me think I could.