First Thoughts

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'Many times when I stop working on a problem consciously, my mind continues to work on it below the surface. Often solutions come on me quite by surprise. I've learned over time to allow that to happen, rather than to feel that I can simply solve the problem by continuous, grueling effort.'
MARILYNNE ROBINSON, novelist, quoted in the University of Iowa magazine Arts & Sciences (Fall 2003)

'You've got to get people to believe that change is possible . . . You have to show that you can fight things successfully -- even if you don't win.'
WINONA LADUKE, Native American activist, Punk Planet (Sept./Oct. 2003)

'No sight that human eyes can look upon is more provocative of awe than is the night sky scattered thick with stars.'
LLEWELYN POWYS, poet, Common Ground (Summer 2003)

'I CAN'T HELP but think that at the end of your life, when you look back, there'll be a tone. And that tone will come from the essence of how you live your day-to-day -- what you did in that between time -- because that is really your life.'
RICHARD LINKLATER, film director, MovieMaker (Spring 2003)

'Johnny Cash's voice -- the only voice besides James Earl Jones' that could credibly pass for God's.'
MADELYN ROSENBERG, music critic, Here #7

'FAILURE OR SUCCESS seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.'
E.M. FORSTER, English novelist

'The living pleasures, the almost awesome ones, are the simplest. Notably these are three: to walk, to look, and to eat.'
EMMETT HUGHES, foreign correspondent writing about Rome, Esquire (Feb. 1961)

'The American media routinely regard the scandalous levels of both obesity and emotional distress here with befuddlement and even indignation, as though it were inexplicable and even unfair that such a friendly, generous, valiant, humorous, and enterprising folk as we should be so mysteriously afflicted with The Blues. Have any reporters noticed how we actually live here in America?'
JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER, from Curmudgeon in the Wild, an online column of Orion magazine (Oct. 2003)

'First, I thought my life's work was psychology. And then I thought my life's work was psychedelics. Then I thought my life's work was bringing eastern philosophy to the West. Now . . . whatever I'm doing now is my life's work, even if it's sitting by the window.'
RAM DASS, interview in Whole Life Times (Oct. 2003)

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