Quotes About Engagement

John Gardner wrote that the writer is creating a dream into which he or she invites the reader, and that the dream must be vivid and continuous.

they seemed to read all the papers the school sent home, which I think is actually a little show-offy.

And while everyone has to make a living and show up for family, listening is optional. You have to make a conscious decision to listen harder.

You don't get to sit next to your readers and explain little things you left out, or fill in details that would have made the action more interesting or believable. The material has got to work on its own, and the dream must be vivid and continuous.

Someone else is doing the living for me, and all I have to do is let their stories, humor, knowledge, and images—some of which I'll never forget—flow through me, even as I forget to turn off the car when I arrive at my destination.

He started to explain his position, trying to get me to engage. I secretly shut my heart to him completely. I forgot that this hurts only me.

One time, in one of my classes, I asked my students to write about lunches for half an hour, and I sat down with them and wrote:

I became a socialist for five weeks, then the bus ride to my socialist meetings wore me out.

Sitting alone with Jean, Avery felt for the first time that he was part of the world, engaged in the same simple happiness that was known to so many and was so miraculous. He wanted to know everything; he did not mean this carelessly. He wanted to know the child and the schoolgirl, what she'd believed in and what she'd loved, what she'd worn and what she'd read -- no detail was too small or insignificant -- so that when at last he touched her, his hands would have this intelligence.

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.

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee.

One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes.

I don't expect answers from anyone. The most I ever hope for is that here and there one may find someone who at least acknowledges the question!

We all know that things go on we'd sooner not think about, an' most folk mind their own affairs. But if yer forced ter know, then yer forced ter do summink.

Ignorance is something of an excuse, but not entirely. So often we do not look because if we looked we should feel obliged to do something.

With his finger curled under his lip, his elbow on the arm of the couch, he merely studied me as I recounted the memories, and now he was eager for the tale to go on.

She'd always liked to listen to people, especially when they talked so much that she didn't have to say anything much herself.

You know, we could play a game. We meet and I start talking, and slap damn, you kill me when I take a verbal turn you don't like.

No hay nada en este mundo que no posea cierta fascinación.

I wanted this mortal companion precisely because I had put myself into the mortal world.

We watch And we are always there.

Even if his eyes were dull as though the dazzling colors of my paintings did not matter to him, was he not near at hand?

I could feel the attention as if it were an embrace.

Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines on a boardwalk, those shovel things where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldy and you worked at too great a remove.