"A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future."

- Coco Chanel

"One ought not to fall in love with someone by way of their writing. One must be especially careful if the writing is good, for then one assumes the writer is good, funny, clever, profound, sensitive, smart, wise, loving, and true. It is unfair to the writer and dangerous to the reader to hold the writer to the standards of his writing, for in his writing, the writer is his best self; in person, he is a person, and we all know what that means."

--Jane Juska

For all you emerging fabulous writers out there in Forum Land, I offer theses words of inspiration:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are indadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?"
Actually, who are we not to be.
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are born to manifest the Glory of God that is within us.
It is not just within some of us, it is in everyone.
And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give permission to other people to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

--Nelson Mandella, Inaugural Address, 1997.

"The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do!"

- Henry Moore

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Jerri Bell
Moderator

"I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems....I think that we fail in part because we lack serious ambition.

"If our goal in life is to remain content, no ambition is sensible....If our goal is to write...the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.

"True ambition...seeks fame in the old sense, to make words that live forever. If even to entertain such ambition reveals monstrous egotism, let me argue that the common alternative is petty egotism that spends itself in small competitiveness, that measures its success by quantity of publication, by blurbs on jackets, by small achievement: to be the best poet in the workshop, to be published by Knopf, to win the Pulitzer or the Nobel....The grander goal is to be as good as Dante."

- Donald Hall, "Poetry and Ambition" (speech to AWP)

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Jerri Bell
Moderator

"The artist is intoxicated by ritual as well as result."

- Graffito found in a stall in the women's restroom, Lockwood Library, Vassar College, 1982.

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Jerri Bell
Moderator

Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? I guarantee nothing but a free trip to Peru and the South Sea islands and back, but you will find good use for your technical abilities on the voyage. Reply at once.

Next day the following telegram arrived from Torstein:

COMING. TORSTEIN.


- Thor Heyerdahl

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth:
I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go
about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will
seek him whom my soul loveth. . . .


--Song of Solomon 3:4

I once expected to spend seven years walking around the world on foot. I walked from Mexico to Panama where the road ended before an almost uninhabited swamp called the Choco Colombiano. Even today there is no road. Perhaps it is time for me to resume my wanderings where I left off as a tropical tramp in the slums of Panama. Perhaps like Ambrose Bierce who disappeared in the desert of Sonora I may also disappear. But after being in all mankind it is hard to come to terms with oblivion - not to see hundreds of millions of Chinese with college diplomas come aboard the locomotive of history - not to know if someone has solved the riddle of the universe that baffled Einstein in his futile efforts to make space, time, gravitation and electromagnetism fall into place in a unified field theory - never to experience democracy replacing plutocracy in the military-industrial complex that rules America - never to witness the day foreseen by Tennyson "when the war-drums no longer and the battle-flags are furled, in the parliament of man, the federation of the world."

I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions - just a few old socks and love letters, and my windows overlooking Notre-Dame for all of you to enjoy, and my little rag and bone shop of the heart whose motto is "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise." I may disappear leaving no forwarding address, but for all you know I may still be walking among you on my vagabond journey around the world.


- George Whitman

There are thousands of talented writers at work in America, and only a few of them (I think the number might be as low as five per cent) can support their families and themselves with their work. There's always some grant money available, but it's never enough to go around. As for government subsidies for creative writers, perish the thought. Tobacco subsidies, sure. Research grants to study the motility of unpreserved bull sperm, of course. Creative-writing subsidies, never. . . . America has never much revered her creative people; as a whole, we're more interested in commemorative plates from the Franklin Mint and Internet greeting-cards. And if you don't like it. . .that's just the way things are. Americans are a lot more interested in TV quiz shows than in the short fiction of Raymond Carver.

- Stephen King

The next day I went into rehearsal for the Yukatakai, the summer dances, and life returned to normal.

That night, still feeling weak and vulnerable, I attended a scheduled ozashiki. As I bowed in greeting, one of the guests, who was pretending to be drunk, pushed me over on the floor. I landed on my back and was just about to get up when he grabbed hold of the padded hem of my kimono and lifted the skirt all the way up to my thighs, exposing my legs and undergarments. He then took hold of my legs and dragged me around the floor like a rag doll. Everybody started laughing, including the other maiko and geiko who were in the room.

I was livid with rage and embarrassment. I jumped up, pulled my skirts together, and headed straight for the kitchen. I borrowed a sashimi knife from one of the maids. I placed it on a tray and went back to the banquet room.

"All right everybody, stop it right here. Nobody move!"

"Please, Mine-chan, I was only kidding around. I didn't mean anything."

The okasan came running in after me.

"Stop, Mine-chan. Don't!"

I paid no attention to her. I was furious.

I spoke slowly and calmly. "Stay where you are. I want you all to listen very carefully to what I have to say. I'm going to wound this gentleman. I may even kill him. I want you all to realize how deeply humiliated I feel."

I went up to my assailant and shoved the knife up against the base of his throat.

"Stab the body and it heals. But injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime. You have wounded my pride and I do not suffer disgrace lightly. I will not forget what happened here tonight for as long as I live. But you are not worth going to jail over, so I'll let you go. But don't you ever do anything like this again."

With that I thrust the knife point-down into the tatami next to where the guest was sitting and, with held held high, marched out of the room.



-- Mineko Iwasaki, Geisha, a Life