Quote of the Day (Cynthia Ozick, on ‘Purpose in Life’)

“To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.” — American novelist, short-story writer, and critic Cynthia Ozick, O Magazine, September 2002

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on ‘Golden Moments in the Stream of Life’)

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”—English novelist Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), quoted in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quote of the Day (Lewis Mumford, on Life)

“Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner.” — American urban planner, sociologist and historian Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), The Conduct of Life: Ethical and Religious Issues Confronting Modern Civilization (1951)

Quote of the Day (David Lynch, on How ‘People Are Like Detectives’)

“People are like detectives and our lives are filled with clues. Some people wonder and look around and they take what they see and try to figure out what it all means. And they reach different conclusions. We are all like detectives, trying to figure out the meaning of life. And the same thing goes for film. You want to find a meaning – at least some people do. But now the world goes so fast. It’s just screaming on the surface loudly. And there’s not that much time for people to contemplate things and daydream and ponder.”—American film director David Lynch (1946-2025), quoted by Ross Simonini, “ ‘Daydreaming Is So Important To Me’: How David Lynch Fishes for Ideas,” Art Review, Jan. 5, 2021

The image accompanying this post, of David Lynch at a ceremony for Sissy Spacek to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was taken on Aug. 1, 2011, by Angela George. 

Quote of the Day (Tom Stoppard, on Life, ‘A Gamble’)

“Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it.” —Czech-born English playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Tom Stoppard (1937-2025), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966)

Quote of the Day (Flannery O’Connor, on the Direction of a Life)

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”—American novelist and short-story writer Flannery O’Connor (1926-1964), Wise Blood: A Novel (1952)

I was glad to see, in the new film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, not only that The Boss is reading a Flannery O'Connor book, but also that his producer and manager Jon Landau recalls this quote for him.

 I hope that more readers will be curious enough to seek out more work by this startlingly original voice in American fiction.

Quote of the Day (Anthony Powell, on Decisive Events in Life)

“For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.”—English novelist Anthony Powell (1905-2000), A Buyer’s Market: A Dance to the Music of Time, Second Movement (1952)

Quote of the Day (William James, on What ‘Makes You Feel Most Deeply and Vitally Alive’)

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”—American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910), The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Quote of the Day (Amor Towles, on How Life Proceeds)

“Life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve —if not glacially, then at least gradually.”— American novelist Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016)

The attached photo of Amor Towles was taken Aug. 9, 2018, by librairie mollat.

Quote of the Day (Alain de Botton, on ‘The Emotionally Intelligent Person’)

“The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humour, sexual understanding and selective resignation. The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves the time to determine what gives their working lives meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world. The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence. The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm.” —Swiss-born British author and philosopher Alain de Botton, introduction to The School of Life: An Emotional Education (2019)

Quote of the Day (Edith Hamilton, on ‘Human Experience’)

“Though the outside of life changes much, the inside changes little, and the lesson-book we cannot graduate from is human experience.”— American educator, classicist, and author Edith Hamilton (1867-1963), The Greek Way (1930)

Quote of the Day (Tom Stoppard, on Nature and Each Moment)

“Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment.”—Czech-born British playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Tom Stoppard, Shipwreck: The Coast of Utopia, Vol. 2 (2002)

Quote of the Day (Henry Ward Beecher, on What Really Makes Someone Rich)

“No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.”— U.S. abolitionist/minister Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), quoted by Thomas Wallace Knox, Life and Work of Henry Ward Beecher: An Authentic, Impartial and Complete History of His Public Career and Private Life (1887)

Quote of the Day (Jewel, on Life as One’s ‘Best Work of Art’)

“I remember writing at that age [16-19] that I didn’t want my music to be my best work of art — I wanted my life to be my best work of art. I take music seriously, but I take that promise to myself more seriously.”— American singer-songwriter, poet and humanitarian activist Jewel, interviewed by Lovia Gyarke, “Origins,” T: The Style Magazine of “The New York Times,” Apr. 21, 2024

The image accompanying this post, showing Jewel at Yahoo Yodel 2009, was taken Oct. 13, 2009, by Yodel Anecdotal/Yahoo! Inc.

Quote of the Day (Jazzman Sonny Rollins, With Good Life Advice)

“No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.”—Retired jazz saxophone master Sonny Rollins, The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam V.H. Reese (2024)

(The accompanying photo of Sonny Rollins was taken July 17, 2009, by Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden.)

Quote of the Day (James Baldwin, on Trusting Life)

“Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.”—African-American novelist-essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987), “White Man’s Guilt,” Ebony, August 1965, reprinted in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985 (1985)

Quote of the Day (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on Life and Memory)

“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”—Colombian Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-2014), Living to Tell the Tale: An Autobiography, translated by Edith Grossman (2003)

Quote of the Day (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, on Circumstance)

“Sift each of us through the great sieve of circumstance and you have a residue, great or small as the case may be, that is the man or the woman.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and memoirist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953), Cross Creek (1942)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Jimmy Carter, on the Unseen ‘Guiding Lights of Life’)

“One of the most interesting verses that I know in the Bible, for instance, is when the Romans ask Paul, ‘St. Paul, what are the important things in life? What are the things that never change?’ And Paul said, interestingly, ‘they're the things that you cannot see.’ What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love. You can't see any of those. You can't prove they're there, but they're the guiding lights of life.” —Former American President Jimmy Carter, remarks from a 1996 appearance on The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer quoted in Tom Bearden’s report on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Carter, The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, Oct. 11, 2002

Quote of the Day (Poet Amy Clampitt, on How ‘The World Is a Wheel’)

“Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're
made of, is motion.”—American poet Amy Clampitt (1920-1993), “Nothing Stays Put,” in The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt (1997)