Catching up on great quotes

I was tempted today to focus on a politician or two, just to join in all the noise from the current campaign season.  But, better sense came over me and I decided, instead, to just “catch up” on some of the quotes that I’ve accumulated during the past few months and not had time to present.

Here are some comments by writers and other famous folks who also had some writing successes during their lifetimes, starting with a couple from “The Wizard of Westwood,” longtime Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden, who had 13 national championships at UCLA.

“If you don't have time to do it right,” Wooden once asked, “when do you think you’ll have time to do it over?”   A great reader and author of several inspirational books, Wooden also noted that “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.  I love re-reading the classics and old favorites.”

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From French author Andre Malraux, who was born on this day in 1901:  “Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not that one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.”  In other words, to be bold!

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From longtime radio and television personality Art Linkletter:  “My philosophy is to do the best you can for somebody. Help. It's not just what do you for yourself. It's how you treat people decently. The golden rule; there isn't big anything better than the golden rule. It's in every major religion in one language or another.”

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And, finally, from one of my all-time favorite writers, Ernest Hemingway:  “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.  After you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened, happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you:  the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and places and how the weather was.”

As the political season winds down, immerse yourself in a “favorite read.”  And, happy writing as you uncover or discover your next “Writer’s Moments.”

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