"A part-time painter is the worst. People who are partly something, are the worst. You have to try to be whole. That demands sacrifice. The worst sacrifice is being half. Many people choose it freely. They compromise. Life is full of compromises, but art is not."

- Sam Dillemans

 

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

-Charles Bukowski

 

"War is society's failure to perform its most important duty, to protect its own people."

 -Daniel Etherington

 

"If an idea cannot be stated in plain English, then said idea is not worth pursuing."

-Chomksy's Razor

 

"There are some things you can't learn through words alone. You need to first experience agony, fall into doubt, put in the effort, and think about the problem. Only then, you will truly learn."

 -Araki Joh

 

"Greatest irony is that left unsaid."

-bullsiainen

 

"It's difficult to criticize one's parents, because it was their upbringing that gave you the keys to criticize them in the first place."

-bullsiainen

 

"In a land where prosperity is always valued in money, the poor always remain noble."

-bullsiainen

 

"If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut,

don't do it.

if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words,

don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it.

if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it.

if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it.

 

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it.

if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently.

if it never does roar out of you, do something else.

 

if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all,

you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self-love.

the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind.

don't add to that. don't do it.

 

unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it.

when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you.

 

there is no other way.

 

and there never was."

-Charles Bukowski