Dave Schaafsma > Dave's Quotes

“At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.”
― Pablo Neruda, Regalo de un Poeta

“It is better to know how to learn than to know.”
― Dr. Seuss

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas

“There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper.”
― Quentin Crisp

“But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

“Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
― Jane Goodall

“Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

“The 10's(2010) are a baby kangaroo, a bill overdue, a coal chute for staggering millions, a bowl of camphor punch, the fast-dissolving afterimages of a long night's exhausting dreams. Boys and girls, take off those space suits; the boot is lifted from your chest and you can safely resume the search for perfection.”
― Jim Woodring

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.”
― Raymond Carver

“I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement.”
― Raymond Carver, Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories

“If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.”
― Anne Tyler, The Beginner's Goodbye

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
― Franz Kafka

“Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
― Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Virtually every politician portrayed in film or on television over the last decade has been venal, corrupt, opportunistic, cynical, if not worse. Whether these dramatized images are accurate or exagerated matters little. The corporatist system wins either way: directly through corruption and indirectly through the damage done to the citizen's respect for the representative system.
(III - From Corporatism to Democracy)”
― John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization

“I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“Some of the world's blackest holes are out
in the open for anyone to see....”
― Joe Sacco, Palestine

“I chiefly concern myself with those who seldom get a hearing, & I don't feel it is incumbent on me to balance their voices with the well-crafted apologetics of the powerful. The powerful are generally excellently served by the mainstream media or propaganda organs. The powerful should be quoted, yes, but to measure their pronouncements against the truth, not to obscure it.”
― Joe Sacco, Journalism

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.”
― Philip Pullman

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.”
― George Orwell

“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.”
― Tom Waits

“Going too far is half the pleasure of not getting anywhere.”
― Bill Griffith, Zippy: Walk a Mile in My Muu-Muu

“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”
― Groucho Marx

“Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.”
― Woody Allen, Annie Hall: Screenplay