Quote of the Day (Athol Fugard, on Rejecting Negativity)

“It came quite early in my life. I realised one day what is necessary is that you leave the destructive negative emotions…outside the door and close the door. The only emotion I sit with when I write is love.”—South African playwright Athol Fugard (1932-2025) quoted by Franklin Nelson, “Obituary: Chronicler of South Africa’s Painful Era of Apartheid,” The Financial Times, Mar. 15-16, 2025

Quote of the Day (Steven Petrow, on How ‘Joy is Always Present’)

“Joy is always present—in the silver lining, in the resiliency, in our memories, in the connection to those who share your grief when it comes. It’s in the everyday world, on good days as well as bad ones. You only have to look for it, be confident that it’s there, and be open to it when you find it.”— American journalist and author Steven Petrow, The Joy You Make: Find the Silver Linings— Even on Your Darkest Days (2024)

(The image accompanying this post of Steven Petrow was taken Jan. 1, 2002.)

Quote of the Day (Laura McKowen, on How ‘Anything is Possible Right Now’)

“Nothing in the future exists yet. But anything is possible right now. Including the thing you think you cannot do.”— American memoirist Laura McKowen, We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life (2020)

Quote of the Day (Gelsey Kirkland, on Children and Uncertainty)

“Fortunately for children, the uncertainties of the present always give way to the enchanted possibilities of the future.” —American ballerina Gelsey Kirkland (with Greg Lawrence), Dancing on My Grave: An Autobiography (1986)

Quote of the Day (Thomas Wolfe, on Americans’ ‘Almost Quenchless Hope,’ Even Amid the Great Depression)

“It is also true—and this is a curious paradox about America—that these same men who stand upon the corner and wait around on Sunday afternoons for nothing are filled at the same time with an almost quenchless hope, an almost boundless optimism, an almost indestructible belief that something is bound to turn up, something is sure to happen. This is a peculiar quality of the American soul, and it contributes largely to the strange enigma of our life, which is so incredibly mixed of harshness and of tenderness, of innocence and of crime, of loneliness and of good fellowship, of desolation and of exultant hope, of terror and of courage, of nameless fear and of soaring conviction, of brutal, empty, naked, bleak, corrosive ugliness, and of beauty so lovely and so overwhelming that the tongue is stopped by it, and the language for it has not yet been uttered.”—American novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), You Can’t Go Home Again (1940)

Quote of the Day (Roald Dahl, on Why a Person With Good Thoughts Can Never Be Ugly)

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”— British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot Roald Dahl (1916-1990), The Twits (1980)

Quote of the Day (Nelson Mandela, on the Need for Optimism)

“Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”—Anti-apartheid activist and President of South Africa Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (1994)

This coming Wednesday marks the 100^thbirthday of the great freedom fighter.

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

 

Quote of the Day (Kerry Washington, on Why She Must ‘Choose to Feel Optimistic’)

"I choose to feel optimistic, because I don’t think I could get out of bed if I didn’t.”—Actress Kerry Washington, on social change, quoted in “Kerry Washington: I Choose to Feel Optimistic, Because I Couldn't Get Out of Bed Otherwise,” In Style, September 2016

Quote of the Day (Rex Stout, on the ‘Advantage of Being a Pessimist’)

"This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.” ― Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance (1934)

(The image accompanying this post is a 1973 publicity photograph of the creator of the great detective Nero Wolfe, taken by Jill Krementz to promote Stout’s book A Family Affair.)

Quote of the Day (Mary Karr, on How We ‘Lean Into Love’)

“That's what's so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn't matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that's our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope."--Mary Karr, “The Art of Memoir No. 1,” interviewed by Amanda Fortini, The Paris Review (Winter 2009)