As previously mentioned, I like quotes. It’s as if I think that by merely knowing what someone intelligent said, I will become just as intelligent as they. Only I’m not intelligent enough to remember any of the things that they actually said, which is why I have to write them down. Here are my most recent finds, the majority of which I’ve lifted from the brilliant @ommwriter’s twitter stream (for ‘majority’ read ‘all’) – I suggested they make a page of them ages ago, they haven’t yet, so I’ve made my own.

Some are funny. Some are true. Some are familiar – although who remembers who first said “Less is more”? Really? Liar. Some are inspiring, but I left most of those out because most ‘inspiring’ things make me cringe. All entertained me though. Lookout for the one by Truman Capote, whose way with words was almost as inspired his taste in home furnishings (see above). The one from Popular Mechanics is also very insightful.

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“What’s the sense of living if you’re not learning.” – Chiquira Carrasca

“Less is more.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” – Maria Robinson

“Music is love in search of a word.” – Sidney Lanier

“Imagine more. Think less.” – unknown

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow…” – Lawrence Clark Powell

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” – E. L. Doctorow

“Writing is both mask and unveiling.” – E.B. White

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” – Edwin Schlossberg

“Writing well means never having to say, ‘I guess you had to be there.’” – Jef Mallett

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949

“The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.” – Richard Harding Davis

“Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.” – Catherine O’Hara

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” -Ernest Hemingway

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” – Tom Clancy

“A dose of poison can do its work only once, but a bad book can go on poisoning people’s minds for any length of time.” – Stud Terkel

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us” – Franz Kafka

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” – Elmore Leonard

“The human mind is like umbrella. It functions best when open.” – Max Gropius

“Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.” – Noam Chomsky

“Some stories are true that never happened.” – Elie Weisel

“I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” – Henri Matisse

“It [creativity] is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – Doctorow

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” – Thomas Mann

“It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.” – Andrew Jackson

“There is no method except to be very intelligent.” – T. S. Eliot

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.” – Truman Capote

“I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.” – Cormac McCart

“Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area.”- Nadine Gordimer

“If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.” – Kingsley Amis

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” – Isaac Asimov

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” – Douglas Adams

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” – Albert Camus

“Other people’s interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself.” – B. Francis

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” – Cyril Connolly

Cool Snow White and The Joker iPad vinyl stickers.

If I had an iPad I might be tempted by a gothed-up Snow White.

There is an advert that pops up every so often over there on the right hand side. It may or may not be there now. Have a look. It’s one of these google ads that is generated according to surrounding content. It features a picture of a very smiley bald man with a laptop (or sometimes an equally delirious lady with lovely long hair and a laptop) and above his head it cheerily reads: Why not be a writer?

I think the same thing every time I see it.

BECAUSE IT HURTS AND MAKES ME WANT TO BREAK THINGS.

Just saying.

I am a big user of Moleskine note books. I have way too many of them. I will no doubt have way too many more. The pictures above are from an imaginary ad campaign that Amy Nortman, a student of the University of North Texas, won a competition with. What competition? I have no idea. But they are genius and ably explain the love of the Moleskine, so I hope it was a competition with a big fat cheque at the end of it.

See these and the rest of the series in their full glory on the Moleskine Flickr. To find your own deep love and spend more money than is reasonable on notebooks, see the Moleskine site.

I don’t think Hunter S. Thompson liked contracts.

I like quotes. Here are some of my favourites, including one or two from the good doctor above.

“Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.” Hunter S. Thompson

“Choose not a life of imitation,” Red Hot Chili Peppers, Can’t Stop

“Writing is the flip side of sex – it’s only good when it’s over.” Hunter S. Thompson

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original you will have to ram it down their throats.”

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Calvin Coolidge

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.” Jim Jarmusch

Vanity Fair journalist to Matthew Perry’s character Matt Albie in Studio 60 as she takes down the name on the label on the rug in his office: “It’s a 10,000 word feature, they can’t all be winners.”

French author Frederic Beigbeder when asked what makes a good party: “Pretty girls, Champagne and me.”

“When two people know a secret, it’s not a secret anymore.” Titta Di Girolamo, The Consequences Of Love

“Midlife is when you get to the top of the ladder and realise that you’ve had the ladder against the wrong wall,” via Tom Ford

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” George Best

“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” Eleanor Roosevelt

John Updike on living in NYC: “The true new yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

“Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend, inside a dog it’s too dark to read.” Groucho Marx

“I act real shallow but I’m in too deep,” Dizzee Rascal, Bonkers

“Pop music will never die, it just has no direction” Bis, Action & Drama

I like coffee. A lot. But not this much.

Virtual life getting you down? Never got time to see your wife/kids/real friends? Always too busy answering emails/facebook messages to enjoy a nice walk in the park? Always being poked, but not in a good way? Then help is at hand.

If you’re curious about Google Wave, or struggling to understand what the point of it is, this video explains both the pros, and with the very last bit, the major con.