Quotes: Anne Lamott

"Curiosity leads to wonder and wonder is a cousin to love. Wonder is why we're here." 

–– Anne Lamott (b. 1954), American writer 

Source: Anne Lamott. Somehow: Thoughts on Love. New York: Random House, 2024; p. 171. 

via: Commonplace Book 2024, p. 11.

Quotes: Anthony Doerr

"Fiction writing is often an excuse for me to pursue various curiosities I have. And curiosity is really just a form of love: "Are you curious?" is another way of asking, "Are you in love with the world?" In my own work, projects always start with something I get really interested in, like whale standings or insects or venomous snails, or hibernating animals or snowflakes. The research is often the kernel, and I start writing around it; building it out into a spiral sort of, trying to find a character who I can use –– often I go for the most obvious thing, which is to infect the character with the same kind of interest I have (e.g., the shell collector). So when young writers ask for advice, not that I'm qualified to give any, I usually say that part of writing is finding the things in the world that you care the most about, that you care so deeply about you'd never get tired of reading or writing about them, and make those your subjects. For me it has been wonder –– what wonder is, where can we find it. For someone else it might be skateboards, or jazz, or bipolar disorder, or whatever. If you care deeply enough about something, some of that interest and passion will (hopefully) transfer through the page to the reader."

–– Anthony Doerr, American writer 

Source: Austin Kleon Tumblr, Friday July 26, 2024.

via: Commonplace Book, 2022-2024, 2024, p. 189-190.

Quotes: Cecilia Borromeo

"It would not hurt that we live our lives with childlike wonder. Have you asked yourself lately: When was the last time I saw something for the first time?"

–– Cecilia Borromeo, Filipino poet 

via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook 2017-2018 d, 2017, p. 23. 

Quotes: Emily Dickinson

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience." 

–– Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet 

via: Sketchbook 32, 2022, p. 120. 

Quotes: G. K. Chesterton

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

–– G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer 

Source: Austin Kleon, November 18, 2022. 

via: Sketchbook 32, 2022, p. 111.

Quotes: Albert Einstein

"Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living."

–– Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American theoretical physicist 

via: Sketchbook 26, 2022, p. 132.

Quotes: Arthur Rubinstein

"To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings – it's all a miracle, I have adopted the technique of living life miracle to miracle." 

–– Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982), Polish-born American pianist 

via: Sketchbook 28, 2016, p. 147.

Quotes: Mark Strand

"When I read poetry, I want to feel myself suddenly larger ... in touch with – or at least close to – what I deem magical, astonishing. I want to experience a kind of wonderment. And when you report back to your own daily world after experiencing the strangeness of a world sort of recombined and reordered in the depths of a poet's soul, the world looks fresher somehow. Your daily world has been taken out of context. It has the voice of the poet written all over it, for one thing, but it also seems suddenly more alive – not as routinely there." 

–– Mark Strand (1934-2014), Canadian-born American poet, essayist, translator 

Source: The Art of Poetry No. 77

via: Sketchbook A, 2018, p. 62.

Quotes: Chris Ware

"Drawing is simply another way of seeing, which we don't really do as adults. Children see all the time. Children are always drawing with their eyes. I think that's part of what becoming an artist is, is getting back in touch with that sense of experience and wonder that you have as a kid... [T]he act of drawing is seeing, it's trying to see something, and it puts you into a completely different mental state. It puts you into a state of being in that moment for that specific moment and understanding reality in a way that adults are very, very good at not doing. We spend most of our lives kind of getting out of the way of things, trying to remember stuff, trying to get through the day, certain regrets and problems, mistakes that we made, either an hour before or years before, come back to us. So, we spend much of our time just in this sort of cloud of remembrance and anxiety, but trying to live in that moment is a very difficult accomplishment. I think drawing encourages that more than anything." 

–– Chris Ware (b. 1967), American cartoonist 

Source: Austin Kleon tumblr 

via: Sketchbook A, 2017, p. 41.

Quotes: Cesare Pavese

"A true revelation, it seems to me, will only emerge from stubborn concentration on a solitary problem. I am not in league with inventors or adventurers, nor with travellers to exotic destinations. The surest – also the quickest – way to awake the sense of wonder in ourselves, is to look intently, undeterred, at a single object. Suddenly, miraculously, it will reveal itself as something we have never seen before." 

–– Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator 

Source: Dialoghi con Leuco, 1947, cited in  The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, 1992. 

via Sketchbook 12, 2010, p. 133

Quotes 369: Gaston Bachelard

"The surest sign of wonder is exaggeration." 

–– Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), French philosopher 

via Sketchbook 11, 2010, p. 18