“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not yet stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau, Journals, 1851

“Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.” - James Lee Burke

“Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.” – Carl Sandburg

“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.” – Mason Cooley

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.” - Ira Glass

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” - Samuel Johnson

“Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.” - Virgil Garnett Thomson

“Humor likes danger. If you are cautious by nature, writing humor probably isn’t for you. Humor works best when you sense that the writer is putting himself in jeopardy.” - Scott Adams (this is the first time I’ve realized that Scott Adams is in there twice)

“But now your time at college is at an end. Now you are leaving here. And this leads me to a question that just isn’t asked enough at commencements. Why are you leaving here? This seems like a very nice place.” – Stephen Colbert, in his commencement speech at Knox