Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
-Gene Fowler
If you can’t annoy somebody, there is very little point in writing.
-Kinsley Amis
What is writing like for you? Agony? Fun? Like a confidential friend who helps you sort out thoughts and feelings? Something you do adequately enough but joylessly? A game in which you try to ensnare or trick your reader?
…Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child’s mind, they are not easily eradicated.
-May Sarton
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it becomes to find anything to say.
-Samuel Johnson
Has anyone ever punished you with the “silent treatment”? How did that make you feel? What is the silent treatment intended to do to its “victim”?
Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move to stars to pity.
-Gustave Flaubert
Language sometimes fails us when we try to express deep feelings. Words can’t match the power of our emotions. When this happens, what other ways can we try to express ourselves? What advantages can these ways have over language?
A dragon stranded in shallow water furnishes amusement for the shrimps.
-Chinese proverb
When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him.
-Hindu proverb
Most of us are sorry when someone else has bad luck. But how do we feel when the unfortunate person is rich and powerful?Create a situation in which an important, influential person (real or imaginary) gets into trouble, is caught in embarrassing circumstances, or loses a valuable possession. Write a newspaper article or a skit showing how people react to this misforture.
A whitewashed cow will not remain white for long.
-Chinese proverb
This proverb refers to both actual whitewash and the idea of whitewash as a figurative coverup. (Look up “whitewash” if you’re unsure of its meaning)
There is nothing in which birds differ more from man than the way in which they build and yet leave the landscape as it was before.
-Robert Lynd
What specific lessons could we learn from the bird? These should be lessons that we could actually apply to house design and construction. In what way does Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophy of (houses) mirror the nest design of birds?
The way most people “like animals” is insulting to them. They look down upon them from the height of “superior intelligence.” When I feel for a moment a “superior being,” I remember the hawk’s optic nerve and compare it with my own. Or I compare my powers of scent with the dog’s, or my nerve telepathy with the cat, or my strength with that of almost any animal.
-Algernon S. Logan
This writer apparently believes animals should be respected, not demeaned. In what ways do people who are otherwise kind to animals- especially their own companion animals- show a lack of respect for them?What can we do to help people see the marvelous strengths and instincts of wild animals instead of persisting in seeing them as cute, cuddly things?
How are domestic animals who are being raised for meat treated? Look into the “living” conditions of chickens and calves.
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog has made an alliance with us.
-Maurice Maeterlinck
Would you have added “and the cat” to the above statement? Why or why not? We have also been closely linked to the horse for centries. Why is that relationship different from the one we have with dogs? Or is it?
To a mouse, a cat is a lion.
-Albanian proverb
To an ant, a few drops of rain is a flood.
-Japanese proverb