Some Quotes For You for 2014

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A little writing secret for you. I try and write a chapter at a time with the end game in mind. A bunch of pages of the old black notebook are filled with quotations. I pull them from books, and off the Twitter feed, and some of them I've written down over and over again.

Sometimes I use them, but most of the time, they just sit there, and I read them to get fired up about what I want to write next.

I thought I'd share a few:

The purpose of our lives is to be happy. - Dalai Lama

All, everything that I understand, I only understand because I love. - Leo Tolstoy

The mystery of human existence lies in not just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences. - Eleanor Roosevelt.

You were put on this Earth to achieve your greatest self, to live out your purpose, and to do it fearlessly. - Steve Maraboli - Life, the Truth & Being Free

The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better. - Robert Kennedy.

With love one can live, even without happiness. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart. - Helen Keller.

As I've said, they are mostly inspirational and you can't just walk through your daily life quoting such things or people will put you in a rubber room, but I've always said that what is inside is free, and it took a long time to realize that the external crap can tear you down. Yet what you hold deep inside, and feel each day, and try and live is what is really important to the person you are on the journey with: yourself.

Yet the tricky part is making it all play out in the real world, and the one quote that I keep on a post-it note and automatically put into the new black notebook on the day it arrives is one that shapes both my writing, and more importantly, my living.

We are shaped and fashioned by those that we love." - Geothe.

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