“To grammar even kings bow.” - Moliere

Marie Curie - “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”

‘Anyone can look for history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store.’ Robert Wieder

‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’ Mark Twain

‘The end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time.’ TS Eliot

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.” B. F. Skinner

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”- Amelia Earhart

“Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.” - Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, molding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt, or thought has had its hand in molding us, shaping us.” - Orison Swett Marden

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

“The freelance writer is the person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.” - Robert Benchley

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.- Albert Einstein

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.”- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

These quotes all come from a cozy mystery I read: Murder in Volume by D. R. Meredith. Some of them I thought were good to keep in mind for mystery writers and others I just liked enough to keep track of them.

“Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.” - Agatha Christie

“Real, deliberate, unprovoked rudeness can be quite as shocking as physical violence.” - Michael Gilbert

“As long as we’re going insane we may as well go the whole way. A mere shred of sanity is of no value.” - S. S. Van Dine

“If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.” - C. K. Chesterton

“A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

“Murder is always a mistake; one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.” - Oscar Wilde

“Life is the process of finding out, too late, everything that should have been obvious to you at the time.” - John D. Macdonald

“Nothing is simpler than to kill a man, the difficulties arise in attempting to avoid the consequences.” - Rex Stout

“If you knew anything about detective work, you’d know that the most seemingly impossible conditions are often the easiest to explain.” - Carolyn Wells

“Real crime detection lies not in the microscope and test-tube, but in asking innumerable questions and weeding out the answers.” - Clifford Witting

I do it for the joy it brings because I’m a joyful girl because the world owes me nothing and we owe each other the world

• Ani DiFranco

Helen Keller - “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

You have to know what you want to get.

But when you know that, let it take you.

And if it seems to take you off the track, don’t hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be.

And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you go go dry.

Gertrude Stein

“Everything’s in the mind. That’s where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it.” –Mae West

Quote of the Day - Aristotle - “What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” - Robert Brault

Thomas Carlyle - “No pressure, no diamonds.”

Mark Twain - “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

“The word is not just a sound or written symbol. The word is a force, it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events of your life” - Don Miguel Ruiz

Pat Benatar said: Most chick singers say ‘If you hurt me, I’ll die’…I say, ‘if you hurt me, I’ll kick your ass.

Rita Rudner - “My mother buried three husbands - and two of them were only napping.”

Conversations in real life are full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn’t writing and art be too? –Edgar Degas

“A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one at all would find fault with what he has done” - Cardinal Newman

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” - Emma Goldman

Be who you are and be that well. - Saint Francis de Sales

“You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.” Anne-Wilson Schaef

“Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.” Robbie Glass

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” Pablo Picasso

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilites.” Jean Houston

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” Joseph Chilton Pearce

“I cannot believe the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!” Louise Bogan

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” Henry David Thoreau

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage.” Claude M. Bristol

These are all quotes which I highlighted as I began reading the 10th anniversary edition of ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron. It’s set out like a 12 week workshop for focusing and increasing your creativity.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke

“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium… result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any new technology.” Marshall McLuhan

“Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.” Oliver Wendell Holmes.

You don't have to be traveling afar to send postcards to people 'back home'. You can be a pen pal and write to people around the world. You can also join groups like PostCrossing. "A project that allows you to send postcards and receive postcards back from random people around the world".

But, what do you write on a postcard, especially if you aren't traveling, seeing new places and faces?

You can write almost anything, fairly short to fit on a postcard. Introduce yourself. Write about some interesting thing you did, or saw, or heard about. Write about your location - whatever image your postcard shows. Ask questions about where they live - you have their mailing address so you at least know where they live.

Don't assume you have nothing interesting to write about. If you are traveling and sending postcards home to family and friends you certainly have new things to make note of. Silly things that happened along the way. Something that you did or heard, smelled, touched, watched, or tasted. What do you think about the places you've seen. What would your family/ friend like to know about: history, hobbies, different customs, sports, food?

If nothing else, just write about your day. A postcard can be a snapshot of your day, your adventures, your ideas.

Don't forget to use good penmanship. Postcards are usually hand written. Although you could try out mail art, someone still needs to read or understand what you write.

What could you write about if you were sending a postcard today?