Quotes that Inspire Me
Pleased to share some favorite writing , art, music, creativity, philosophical, and mindfulness quotes I’ve collected over the years. This is a new addition to my website; please come back and visit as I’ll be updating it.
I’ve used these quotes in teaching mindfulness, and as inspiration for my own mindfulness, writing, music, art practice, and life. And I hope you might find them inspiring as well.
On Mindfulness (and Creativity…)
“Stay amazed.” Kevin Pilkintgton
“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. ” —Shunryu Suzuki
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.”—Marcel Proust
“How extraordinary it is to be here at all.” —Stephen Batchelor
“Stop worrying if your vision is new. Let others make that decision . . . they usually do.” —Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George.
“Guilt and regret are my familiars, and it’s a continual challenge to pry myself from their grip. This poem encounters a reprieve—a mercy strong enough to throw me into a delirious acceptance of all my past failures—for the moment. And if we write (and read) to be changed—and I do—then I trust that at least a trace of that acceptance will stay with me.”
—Ellen Bass
“I love loving something so much that you simply don’t care what other people think…”
-Mary Ruefle
“Finally, couldn’t we just relax and lighten up? When we wake up in the morning, we can dedicate our day to learning how to do this. We can cultivate a sense of humor and practice giving ourselves a break. Every time we sit down to meditate, we can think of it as training to lighten up, to have a sense of humor, to relax. As one student said, ‘Lower your standards and relax as it is.’”
“As I’ve grown older, I realize that where I rest in my knowledge is fine, and millions of other people have their own set of knowledge…and this grants me an enormous spaciousness, and lets me entertain what their wisdom and knowledge are without feeling defensive, competitive, inadequate, etc.”—Joan Griffiths Vega
“‘I stopped looking at my phone because I was looking at something else, something so absorbing that I couldn’t turn away.’ The Buddha might add that you don’t need to go bird-watching or visit a rose garden to find reality so absorbing. Every moment deserves our full attention, and with practice, every moment can command it.”—Dan Zigmond, quoting Jenny Odell
“It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.” Pema Chodron
“May I meet this moment fully, may I meet it as a friend…” Sylvia Boorstein
“We often ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ Doing so, we invite painful seeds of sorrow to come up and manifest. We feel suffering, anger, and depression, and produce more such seeds. We would be much happier if we tried to stay in touch with the healthy, joyful seeds inside of us and around us. We should learn to ask, ‘What’s not wrong?’ and be in touch with that. There are so many elements in the world and within our bodies, feelings, perceptions, and consciousness that are wholesome, refreshing, and healing. If we block ourselves, if we stay in the prison of our sorrow, we will not be in touch with these healing elements.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh, in ”Peace is Every Step”
On Writing…
"Content is often unsettling or painful in poems, but form is play, a residue of the fun the poet had while working. Of course, like form and content, pain and fun want to be each other.”
—William Matthews
“I was fretting too much over that opening sentence. I decided to just start writing. Simple little words…There is a little town on a hill called Santa Victoria.” —Robert Creighton
“By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.” —Rita Dove
Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” —Isak Denison.
““Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” Isak Denison.
“How/am I supposed to know/that an old, white-haired guy/a grown-up, is watching me/ from his desk in the future/writing down every move I make.” George Bilgere, Cheap Motels of Youth (Rattle, 2024)
“I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t…
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write.” -"Berryman” by W.S. MerwinOn Poetry
“Poetry makes nothing happen.” W.H. Auden
“Snow in New York is like poetry, or clothes made of roses.
Who needs it, what can you build with snow, who can you feed?” May Swenson
“If you want to change the world’s spirit, I will go so far as to suggest that only poetry can do this.” Andrei Voznesensky
“I realized that each poem could be a wild garden where myth, daily life, nature, and politics would coexist.” Brenda Hillman
“…poems create symmetrical movements of sound and feeeling—heartbeats of vowel and consonants—to frame the many textures of disbelief and delight around us.”-Adrian Matejka
“And if you’ve ever walked into a field, you rarely ask yourself, ‘What does this field mean?’ We rarely question whether the field is showing or telling, imagistic or sentimental, lyric or narrative driven. Instead, we experience the field. We ought to ‘read’ poems similarly; we should experience them first.”-Jake Skeets
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On Visual Art…
*“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” —Pablo Picasso
“Like many poets, I enjoy collage because it allows me to represent how the brain really works (not smoothly!)” Brenda Hillman
Other Quotes That Inspire (Me)…
“Tell a joke to your friends. Fight for what you believe in. Call your mother. Create something the cosmos hasn’t seen before. The implacability of the cosmic voids calls us to action. The universe won’t do anything for us except gives us the freedom to exist. It is our responsibility to imbue the cosmos with meaning and purpose.” Paul M. Sutter
Do one thing every day that scares you.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
“I love loving something so much that you simply don't care what other people think.” —Jenni B. Baker
“We have eternity to be humble.” —Mary Ruefl
“Talent isn’t important. Anybody can have that. What’s important is work.” —Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
“…you have to learn to be big and small at the same time.”-Pema Chodron
On Rejection
“Paper your wall w/ rejection slips.” —John Berryman
“Anne (Sexton) actually seemed to enjoy the process of sending out material. She had envelopes addressed to the magazines she favored, and when her poems came back in the mail, she immediately transferred them to new envelopes and sent them right out again.” —Kathleen Spivak
On Music
"If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn." Charlie Parker
Sam Cooke said this when told he had a beautiful voice,, "Well that's very kind of you, but voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth." Think about that the next time you are listening to a singer.
“Everything we hear is music.” —John Cage
“Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is”—Miles Davis
On Failure…
