I really like quotes. I use them all the time for inspiration and insight! They’re all over my walls, on my phone, on t-shirts, etc.
HOLLYWOOD SUCCESS:
“Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess—and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
– Bill Goldman from Adventures in the Screen Trade, Screenwriter of The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men, Chaplin, Misery, Heat, Stepford Wives, and more.
“In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence.”
-Michaela Coel, Actor, Writer, Producer
“Use your faults, use your defects; then you’re going to be a star.”
– Edith Piaf, Singer/Chanteuse, Le Vie En Rose, and more
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
– Steve Martin, Comedian, Author, and Banjo Player
“Who you are today . . . that’s who you are. Be brave. Be amazing. Be worthy. And every single time you get the chance? Stand up in front of people. Let them see you. Speak. Be heard. Go ahead and have the dry mouth. Let your heart beat so, so fast. Watch everything move in slow motion. So what. You what? You pass out, you die, you poop? No. (And this is really the only lesson you’ll ever need to know.)”
– Shonda Rhimes from Year of Yes, EP/TV Writer of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton, and more.
“Lucky implies I didn’t do anything. Lucky implies something was given to me. Lucky implies that I was handed something I did not earn, that I did not work hard for. Gentle reader, may you never be lucky. I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.”
– Shonda Rhimes from Year of Yes, EP/TV Writer of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton, and more.
“Your failures and misfortunes don’t threaten other people… It’s your assets and your successes that are problems for people who derive their self-esteem from being superior.”
– Carol Dweck, Psychologist and Author
PHILOSOPHICAL:
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
– Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of shit
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
– John Maynard Keynes, my favorite economist
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
– Elie Wiesel, Author and Activist
“I’ll tell you what, you can get a good look at a t-bone by sticking your head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather take the butcher’s word for it.”
– Chris Farley as Tommy Boy
WHITE PEOPLE:
“Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.”
-Anonymous
“Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man”
– Sarah Hagi, Writer
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
– Unknown
COOKING/FOOD:
“I watch cooking change the cook, just as it transforms the food.”
– Laura Esquivel, Novelist, Screenwriter, Playwright, and Politician
“I think careful cooking is love, don’t you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who’s close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.”
– Julia Child, Chef
“Cooking is love made visible.”
“For me, cooking is an extension of love.”
“Cooking is creating emotion.”
– Joel Robuchon, Chef and Restaurateur
“Cooking is like love. You don’t have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It’s the same thing with food.”
– Laurie Colwin, Writer
“Go vegetable heavy. Reverse the psychology of your plate by making meat the side dish and vegetables the main course.”
“There are so many great things about this business. Almost everybody is on the same team. It is all for one-friendly competitiveness. No one is out to hurt anyone.”
– Bobby Flay
“Do you want to make a tamale with peanut butter and jelly? Go Ahead! Somebody will eat it.”
– Bobby Flay, Chef and Restaurateur
CREATIVITY:
“All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.”
– Michael John Bobak, Artist (who smears paint to make his art)
“Find something you really love doing and mix it with something you really care about.”
– Kathleen Hannah, Punk singer and Activist, Bikini Kill, Le Tigre
“Our lives are made of splats. The ways our personalities are shaped are the ways in which we approach splat: the way we go through it; the way we found to go around it; the way we found to pretend to have gone over it, but haven’t; the way we hide our apprehension about what splat is. And on the other side of that, the feeling of completion…and self-approval. It’s heaven, that’s what it is.”
– Stewart Stern, Writer of Rebel Without a Cause
“Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
– Charles Mingus, Jazz Bassist, Bandleader, and Composer
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”
– Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated man, and more.
“The creative adult is the child who survived.”
– Ursula Leguin, Author
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
– Albert Einstein, You know who he is
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
– Maya Angelou, Poet, Queen
WRITING:
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
– Douglas Adams, Author
“The first draft of everything is shit.”
“Write drunk, edit sober.”
– Ernest Hemingway, Novelist and Writer
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”
– James Baldwin, Writer
“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”
– Gustave Flaubert, Novelist
“Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.”
– Esther Freud, Novelist
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Writer and Humorist
“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”
– George Orwell, Novelist and Essayist
“Ideas are cheap. It’s the execution that is all important.”
– George R.R. Martin, Novelist and Screenwriter
“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
– Allen Ginsberg, Poet and Writer
“I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.”
– Sylvia Plath, Poet and Novelist
“An absolutely necessary part of a writer’s equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.”
– Irwin Shaw, Playwright and Screenwriter
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
– Albert Camus, Philosopher and Writer
“Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.”
– Meg Rosoff, Writer
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
– Louis L’Amour, Novelist and Writer
“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.”
“Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.”
“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
– Mark Twain, Writer and Humorist
STRENGTH:
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.”
– Thomas A. Edison, Inventor
“A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.”
– Vernon Howard, Teacher, Author, Philosopher
“Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.”
– Oprah Winfrey, Media Mogul, Talk Show Host
– Louisa May Alcott, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Poet
RANDOM: