Quotes About Progress

From the child of five to myself is but a step. But from the new-born baby to the child of five is an appalling distance. —LEO TOLSTOI

It is so hard to imagine anything fundamentally different from what we have now. But without these alternate visions, we get stuck on dead center. And we'd better get ready. We need to know where we'd like to go.

How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won't betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.

Never mistake motion for action.

And that was the end of the beginning of that

We can't ever go back to old things or try and get the "old kick" out of something or find things the way we remembered them. We have them as we remember them and they are fine and wonderful and we have to go on and have other things because the old things are nowhere except in our minds now.

There is a lot of time between now and the fall term. There is a lot of time between now and the day after tomorrow if you want to put it that way ...

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

It's this way, see--when a writer first starts out, he gets a big kick from the stuff he does, and the reader doesn't get any;then, after a while, the writer gets a little kick and the reader gets a little kick; and finally, if the writer's any good, he doesn't get any kick at all and the reader gets everything.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

The whole thing seemed to run better while I was away.

You could not go back. If you did not go forward what happened?

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness was filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

Just as, with the radio, there are certain things that you become fond of, and you welcome them and resent the new things

Dizem que as sementes daquilo que havemos de realizar se encontram já todas dentro de nós, mas sempre me pareceu que, naqueles que troçam da vida, as sementes se encontram cobertas de melhor terra e de uma percentagem mais alta de adubo.

Gradually, then suddenly.

Por entonces, ya había descubierto que todo, lo bueno y lo malo, deja un vacío cuando se interrumpe. Pero si se trata de algo malo, el vacío va llenándose por sí solo. Mientras que el vacío de algo bueno solo puede llenarse descubriendo algo mejor.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master

Todo, lo bueno y lo malo, deja un vacío cuando se interrumpe. Pero si se trata de algo malo, el vacío va llenándose por sí solo. Mientras que el vacío de algo bueno sólo puede llenarse descubriendo algo mejor.

The very beginning was written and all he had to do was go on. That's all, he said. You see how simple what you cannot do is?