Quote of the Day (Laurie R. King, on Persistence, ‘The Most Common Characteristic of a Successful Writer’)

“Persistence is the most common characteristic of a successful writer; the refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer. But also, keep learning. Keep reading other writers, to see how they do things. Keep thinking about the craft, and how you might do things better. Keep writing for the joy of the thing, not for what you're being told the market wants. But mostly, keep at it.”—American crime and science-fiction novelist and short-story writer Laurie R. King, asked for advice for aspiring writers, quoted by Andrew F. Gulli, “Interview: Laurie R. King,” The Strand Magazine, Issue LXXII (2024)

Quote of the Day (Vivian Gornick, on Persisting at Writing)

“It's terrible, not to be able to work every day, but every day, in my long writing life, to come up against the fog in the head. The inability to think, to write another sentence. There are many days when I don't write anything. But I always sit down at the desk. Absolutely. Every morning, religiously.”— American feminist literary critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist Vivian Gornick quoted by Alexandra Schwartz, “Look Again,” The New Yorker, Feb. 10, 2020

(Photograph of Vivian Gornick taken Oct. 4, 2018, through YouTube by librairie mollat.)

Quote of the Day (Ella Wheeler Wilcox, on ‘The Firm Resolve of a Determined Soul’)

“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,

Can circumvent or hinder or control

The firm resolve of a determined soul,

Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;

All things give way before it, soon or late.”—American poet-journalist Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919), “Will,” from Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1917)

Offhand, I’m not sure if I can think of an individual who better embodies the notion that “will alone is great” than Jackie Robinson (in the accompanying photo). Because of him, baseball’s longstanding “color line” gave way. It was a powerful example of how change in sports can make possible change in the larger society.

I can’t imagine the daily abuse Robinson took in his career and the psychic abuses he endured for his “firm resolve.” All the more reason, then, why he has come to be known as a hero.

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives," he once noted. His surely did.

Quote of the Day (Robert Frost, on Responsibility and Persistence)

"By good rights I ought not to have so much 

Put on me, but there seems no other way. 

Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.

He says the best way out is always through.”—American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), “A Servant to Servants,” in North of Boston (1915)

(The image accompanying this post, a 1959 photograph of the poet taken by Walter Albertin, comes from the Library of Congress’ New York World-Telegram and Sun Collection.)

Quote of the Day (Aaron Sorkin, on Why ‘How You Live Matters’)

"How you live matters. You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the number of times you get back up."—West Wing/A Few Good Men screenwriter/producer Aaron Sorkin, “Remarks at Syracuse University's 158th Commencement and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry's 115th Commencement,” May 13, 2012 

Quote of the Day (Arnold Bennett, With a Good Goal for the New Year)

"Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense."—Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day (1910)

Quote of the Day (Nelson Mandela, on the ‘Greatest Glory in Living’)

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”-- Nelson Mandela, quoted in Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography (2000)

(The image accompanying this post was taken of Mandela at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1993.)