I’ve no desire to sum up the year for all to see this time around. Instead I’ve dug through my collection of quotes, and leave you with a sample of them which more or less cryptically sums up my life this year. All the books quoted are well worth reading, for the record. Happy new year, bitches!
January
“Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. The true witches know that.”
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)
February
“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.“
– Kurt Vonnegut
March
“Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.”
— Neal Stephenson (Anathem)
April
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
May
“It hadn’t been a good day; sanity was a distant memory.”
— Terry Pratchett (Pyramids)
June
“Every single one of us possesses the strength to attempt something he isn’t sure he can accomplish. It can be running a mile, or a 10K race, or 100 miles. It can be changing a career, losing 5 pounds, or telling someone you love her (or him).”
― Scott Jurek (Eat and Run)
July
“The right use of knowledge is fulfilment.”
— Ursula K. LeGuin (Four Ways to Forgiveness)
August
“Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s reasonable deception. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It’s for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die.”
— Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior)
September
“I don’t know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something – or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it’s just an ego trip.“
– Roger Zelazny (Prince of Chaos)
October
“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)
November
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
— Ambrose Redmoon
December
“Let it come, at last, and bring an end to the tyranny of hope.”
— Clive Barker (Weaveworld)
Love and time,
Winterdragon
