Tom Gillispie: Some of my favorite quotations

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Some of my favorite quotations

• Tom Gillispie's resume

Here are some of my favorite quotes (DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER FAVORITE QUOTATIONS NOT LISTED HERE?):

"Speak out; make a difference. If YOU don't no one will."
— Tom Gillispie

SPOTLIGHT

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

WRITING AND EDITING

"Unlike a brain surgeon, the beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time." — Robert Cormier

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." — William Faulkner

"You can't blame the writer for what the characters say." — Truman Capote

"You need the devotion to your work that a priest of God has to his."

— Ernest Hemingway

"The scariest moment is always just before you start." — Stephen King

"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on." — Louis L'Amour

"Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand."
— Henry Miller

"Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down."
— Ray Bradbury

"You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day — so start writing." — Shonda Rhomes

"Write what you know. Write what you want to know more about. Write what you're afraid to write about." — Cec Murphy

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

— Jack London

"Don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work." — Pearl S. Buck

"I always know the ending; that's where I start." — Toni Morrison

"The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind." — John Gregory Dunne

"Before you can write anything, you have to notice something." — John Irving

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work." — Stephen King

"Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps if you have a plan and a course laid out." — John Gardner

"You don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great." — Les Brown

"If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter."
— Anonymous

"If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write."
— Martin Luther

"All my life, I've been frightened at the moment I sit down to write."
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"You don't find time to write. You make time." — Nora Roberts

"The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning." — Anne Tyler

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." — Beatrix Potter

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” — Stephen King

"The most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new." — S. Johnson

"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed."

— Ray Bradbury

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

— Anton Chekhov

"Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed."

— P.G. Wodehouse

“It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” ― Ernest Hemingway

"My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you're a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea. That's the way to get an idea."
— Andy Rooney

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage, as long as you edit brilliantly."

— C.J. Cherryh

"You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different."
— Neil Gaiman

"Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential."

— Jessamyn West

"I lived to write and wrote to live." — Samuel Rogers

"Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience."

— Henry David Thoreau

"Authors with a mortgage never get writer's block." — Mavis Cheek

"Eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, that's the only way I know how to do it." — Philip Roth, on writing

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is hard work." — Stephen King

PROFOUND

"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

— Abraham Lincoln

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." — Ernest Hemingway

"My job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." — Mark Twain

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." — Aldous Huxley

"It is not enough to speak, but to speak true." — Shakespeare

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
— Herman Melville

"If you wait, all you get is older." — Mario Andretti

"Comparison is the thief of joy." — Theodore Roosevelt

"A man who has no imagination has no wings." — Muhammad Ali

"Anything that one man can imagine, another man can make real.”

— Jules Verne

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." — Mark Twain

"Talk low, talk slow and don't say too much." — John Wayne

"I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than alone in the light."

— Helen Keller

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." — Benjamin Franklin

"You cannot travel the path until you have become the path." — Buddha

“You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” — Ray Bradbury

"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong." — Ella Fitzgerald

"A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.''

— Martin Luther King Jr.

"My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time." — Steve Jobs

"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?'

I dream things that never were and say 'Why not'?"

— George Bernard Shaw

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."

— Marianne Williamson (providing one of the great quotes of all time)

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you."

— Carl Sandburg

"You can't wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club."

— Jack London

"The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment."

— Tony Robbins

"I realized that, if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes."

— Charles Lindbergh

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

— Ray Bradbury

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gave it to."

— Dorothy Parker

"Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us."
— Earl Nightingale

SPORTS

"To find a man's true character, play golf with him."

— P. G. Wodehouse

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." — Babe Ruth

"I'm throwing just as hard as I ever did. The ball's just not getting there as fast."
— Lefty Gomez, the baseball hall of famer, who retired at the age of 35

"I've always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best."

— Hakeem Olajuwon

"Sports do not build character. They reveal it.”

— John Wooden

"The other teams could make trouble for us if they win."

— Yogi Berra

"Baseball is like driving; it's the one who gets home safely that counts."

— Tommy Lasorda

"The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man's determination."

— Tommy Lasorda

"Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball."

— James Patrick Murray

"It ain't braggin' if ya can back it up."

— Dizzy Dean

“If you’re caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.”

— Lee Trevino

“Winning is overrated. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war."

— Al McGuire

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."

— John Wooden

"You cannot compare me to my father. Our similarities are different."

— Dale Berra

"If you're in control, you're not going fast enough."

— Parnelli Jones

MOVIES

"By God. She reminds me of me."

— Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne), marveling at Kim Darby's character in the movie True Grit (1969)

"Pain make man think, thought make man wise, and wisdom make life endurable."

— Sakini (Marlon Brando), in one of my all-time favorite movies, Teahouse of the August Moon (1956)

"Doggone it, folks, let's don't let a little ol' Indian raid break up a good barbecue and rodeo."

— Fauntleroy Sage (Big John Hamilton), providing one of my all-time favorite quotes, in the movie McLintock (1963)

“I want you and some young man to have what I had, because all the gold in the United States Treasury and all the harp music in heaven can’t equal what happens between a man and a woman with all that growin’ together. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

— G.W. McLintock (John Wayne), eloquently explaining things to his reel daughter, in the movie McLintock (1963)

"Here's looking at you, kid."

— Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), in perhaps my all-time favorite movie, Casablanca (1942)

IRREVERENT

"I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography."

— Steven Wright

"The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine."

— Abraham Lincoln

TOM GILLISPIE

"If every day was just like Christmas, I'd soon be outta money."

"Today, I'm the oldest I've ever been, and the youngest I'll ever be again."