Pencils With Inspirational Quotes

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We pencil-sketch our previous life so we can contrast it to the technicolor of the moment.
David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy)
Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop
Gabrielle Zevin (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac)
Sometimes I wish life was written pencil so we could erase it and write it all over again.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi (COLOMBO STREETS)
excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.
William Blake (William Blake)
In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion,'" she repeats, making sure of it. If she had paper and pencil, it wouldn't surprise me if she wrote it down. "So what does that really mean? In simple terms." I think it over. It takes me a while to gather my thoughts, but she waits patiently. "I think it means," I say, "that chance encounters are what keep us going. In simple terms.
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
If this was a movie, she’d be the young, ambitious teacher who shows up at the inner city school and inspires the fuckups, and suddenly everyone’s putting down their AKs and picking up their pencils, and the end credits scroll up to announce how all the kids got into Harvard or some shit. Instant Oscar for Hilary Swank.
Elle Kennedy (The Deal (Off-Campus, #1))
The single most powerful element of youth is that you don't have the life experiences to know what can't be done.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
Mistakes? That's why they put erasers on pencils.
Rick Barnett
All I need to do is place my pen against paper and your love writes for me.
Kamand Kojouri
Most of all, I'll remind them each morning that we make a choice to bring positivity or negativity into the world, and that within every single person where lies an extraordinary story waiting to unfold.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
Elodin pointed down the street. "What color is that boy's shirt?" "Blue." "What do you mean by blue? Describe it." I struggled for a moment, failed. "So blue is a name?" "It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself." My head was swimming by this point. "I still don't understand." He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating." He lifted his hands high above his head as if stretching for the sky. "But there are other ways to understanding!" he shouted, laughing like a child. He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us, still laughing. "Look!" he shouted tilting his head back. "Blue! Blue! Blue!
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
Your life should be a story you are excited to tell.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
It's the presence of others who are smarter, kinder, wiser, and different from you that enables you to evolve. Those are the people to surround yourself with at all times.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
In moments of uncertainty, when you must chose between two paths, allowing yourself to be overcome by either the fear of failure or the dimly lit light of possibility, immerse yourself in the life you would be most proud to live.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
Creating something new is easy, creating something that lasts is the challenge.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
Every person has a revolution beating within his or her chest
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.
Gavin Aung Than (Zen Pencils: Cartoon Quotes from Inspirational Folks)
The real bottleneck is software. Creating software can be done only the old-fashioned way. A human -sitting quietly in a chair with a pencil, paper and laptop- is going to have to write the codes... One can mass-produce hardware and increase it's power by piling on more and more chips, but you cannot mass-produce the brain.
Michio Kaku (Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100)
life without a purpose is like an unsharpened pencil; it has no point.
Eraica Chan
Don’t dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will none the less get something that looks remarkably like it. Set yourself a “stint,” [London wrote 1,000 words nearly every day of his adult life] and see that you do that “stint” each day; you will have more words to your credit at the end of the year. Study the tricks of the writers who have arrived. They have mastered the tools with which you are cutting your fingers. They are doing things, and their work bears the internal evidence of how it is done. Don’t wait for some good Samaritan to tell you, but dig it out for yourself. See that your pores are open and your digestion is good. That is, I am confident, the most important rule of all. Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory. And work. Spell it in capital letters. WORK. WORK all the time. Find out about this earth, this universe; this force and matter, and the spirit that glimmers up through force and matter from the maggot to Godhead. And by all this I mean WORK for a philosophy of life. It does not hurt how wrong your philosophy of life may be, so long as you have one and have it well. The three great things are: GOOD HEALTH; WORK; and a PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. I may add, nay, must add, a fourth—SINCERITY. Without this, the other three are without avail; with it you may cleave to greatness and sit among the giants." [Getting Into Print (The Editor magazine, March 1903)]
Jack London
Then I knew: this wasn’t just a passion I felt for my model. My feelings about him had nothing to do with how his looks inspired me; he was far more than a muse. With every stroke of pencil and crayon, I had drawn Will into my heart. I was in love with him.
Sharon Biggs Waller (A Mad, Wicked Folly)
Your twenties are the time to both accept and fight your way into the person you're destined to become.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
You may be safe, but I am free.' Take advantage of the freedom that comes with your youth. Inhale life, exhale fire, and embrace the late, sleepless nights, because that's when the magic happens- when everyone else is asleep and you're awake thinking about the world as it is, and the world as it would be. Make the most of those moments," I said forcefully. "And in the coming years people will tell you that you're too young to change the world. I'm here to tell you, that's fucking bullshit.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
When I drew, I drew for entire days because when I held the pencil in my hand, there was no darkness in my head any more.
Tomas Veres (Before I Won)
Each time you love—be it a man or a child, a cat or a horse—you add color to this world. When you fail to love, you erase color.” She smiles. “Love, in any of its forms, is what takes this journey from a bleak black-and-white pencil sketch to a magnificent oil painting.” She touches my cheek. “It’s the sweet fruit that paints the field and wakes our senses. I’m not saying you must be on a constant quest for it, but please, if love comes to you, if you find it within your grasp, promise me you’ll pluck it from the vine and give it a good looking-over, won’t you?
Lori Nelson Spielman (The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany)
REST IS THE BEST WEAPON..BATTLES WON AND LOST" ((page 209 )) JACKAL CHALLENGING BOURNE : " Paris, Jason Bourne! Paris if you dare! Or shall it be a minor university in Maine. Dr,Webb? ((page 276))... JACKALS WARNING, IN PRINTED WORDS IN A BLACK BUTCHER'S PENCIL ((at an country restaurant Epernon, Paris )) "The trees of Tannenbaum will burn and children will be the kindling. Sleep well Jason Bourne
Robert Ludlum
Writing isn’t necessarily a gift it is a passion. You can write a one page masterpiece to 99 pages of crap. What keeps you coming back is that Zen moment when you enlightened your own self with a few cleverly arranged words and saved yourself a $200 trip to the shrink, by simply buying a #2 pencil.
Shannon L. Alder
It was only by focusing on creating joy in her life that I discovered the greatest feeling of happiness in my own.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
I looked around and acknowledged that what you see around you is proof of what exists within you.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
We need to sharpen our focus & live to the point just like a pencil.
Robin S. Sharma (The Saint, the Surfer, and the CEO: A Remarkable Story about Living Your Heart's Desires)
A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.
Frank Herbert
When you're at odds with yourself, it's hard to create. Sometimes the writing process is as easy as opening up the window and letting in the breeze. And sometimes it's like chiseling away at a block of granite with a pencil.
Anthony Kiedis (Scar Tissue)
I'm happy when I write. I've written my first novel, my pencil is down. My last work has been written. No turning back. No more hesitation. I'm writing my future one page at a time. Inspire. Dream. Live. Breath. Happy. Succeed.
Missy Salick
I am the interpretation of the prophet I am the artist in the coffin I am the brave flag stained with blood I am the wounds overcome I am the dream refusing to sleep I am the bare-breasted voice of liberty I am the comic the insult and the laugh I am the right the middle and the left I am the poached eggs in the sky I am the Parisian streets at night I am the dance that swings till dawn I am the grass on the greener lawn I am the respectful neighbour and the graceful man I am the encouraging smile and the helping hand I am the straight back and the lifted chin I am the tender heart and the will to win I am the rainbow in rain I am the human who won’t die in vain I am Athena of Greek mythology I am the religion that praises equality I am the woman of stealth and affection I am the man of value and compassion I am the wild horse ploughing through I am the shoulder to lean onto I am the Muslim the Jew and the Christian I am the Dane the French and the Palestinian I am the straight the square and the round I am the white the black and the brown I am the free speech and the free press I am the freedom to express I will die for my right to be all the above here mentioned And should threat encounter I’ll pull my pencil
Mie Hansson (Where Pain Thrives)
The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.
Leonard Edward Read (I, Pencil: My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read)
Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely. We can unlock our lives with a pencil tip.
Bonnie Friedman (Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life)
The purest joys are available to all of us, and they're unrelated to status, recognition, or material desires.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
At the greatest levels of affluence, and the deepest levels of poverty, parents share the same desire for their children to have a better future.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
I understood that I might fail, but I wouldn't let it happen because I changed my compass along the way.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
Write the story of your life. Sharpen your pencil, freshen the ink & get to it. You are the author, the world your pages. The hero or the villain. You decide
Megan Hine (Mind of a Survivor)
I nodded, still unable to speak, digesting the weight of what she had just said. We exist because of the sacrifice of those who came before us, but how often can we make them feel the full value of their impact? ... It was only by focusing on creating joy in her life that I discovered the greatest feelings of happiness in my own.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence. If you are properly modest, you will never write it at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don’t see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later, you wonder if it may not be all right after all.
Agatha Christie
They chose to be different. And in doing so, they proved that through struggle, sacrifice and service, staggering personal transformation is possible.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
I may appear to be a broken pencil now but one day you will need me to dot you ‘i’ and cross your ‘t’.
Bernard Kelvin Clive
Here's my best advice: make the little decisions with your head and the big ones with your heart. Do that, and you'll be just fine.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
Our house is quiet, small and plain, and yet its rooms run far and wide. A hundred pencils, swift as rain, writing on sheets of beaten gold would not be quick enough to hold the strange adventures shadows hide...
Nancy Willard (The Tale I Told Sasha)
03:11 And in the past few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You may have seen images like this one: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Or this one: "Your excuse is invalid." Indeed. Or this one: "Before you quit, try!" These are just a couple of examples, but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. (Laughter) And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person." But what if you are that person?
Stella Young
​He turned to pull the door closed and the warm air from the hall rushed through the narrow opening again. As he saw the yellow paper, the pencil flying, scooped off the desk and, unimpeded by the glassless window, sail out into the night and out of his life, Tom Benecke burst into laughter and then closed the door behind him.
Jack Finney (Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets)
The flowers on the entryway table have wilted, and a dozen or so petals have fallen to the floor. I kneel down to clean them up but stop, suddenly struck by the unexpected beauty in what might otherwise be considered debris in need of a broom and dustpan. I reach for my sketchbook and pencils and begin capturing the scene as I see it, a perfect, beautiful mess.
Sarah Jio (All the Flowers in Paris)
Afghan Girl Ice blue eyes that look to the morning sky as I knit the pieces and remnants of my life. I have No books, no paper, no pencils, and no black boards. I look at the holes in my life as I see the hills of the Appalachians that echo. I think to myself, who will I marry? Is my life-like Pari? These strings please come together. Snowflakes give me hope, and my dreams dance all around me. I‘ll put another log on the fire. I watch the brown paper bag over the broken glass pane letting the cold wind in; I’ll take some of these remnants and stuff it. These strings are come together. Mama told me that life would be hard. I bartered for flour the other day, and the chickens ain’t laying no eggs. I struggle with life and these strings. My hands are worn and tired. Now, I have granny square hands. I am unclean, unblemished, and finished, Afghan girl.
Edna Stewart (Carpe Diem)
Walker-thinkers have found various ways to accommodate the gifts that their walking brings. Caught paperless on his walks in the Czech enclaves of Iowa, maestro Dvořák scribbles the string quartets that visited his brain on his starched white shirt cuffs (so the legend goes). More proactively, Thomas Hobbes fashioned a walking stick for himself with an inkwell attached, and modern poet Mary Oliver leaves pencils in the trees along her usual pathways, in case a poem descends during her rambles.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt (Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness)
A Zentangle® Art Kit To make your own little art kit you will need: Zentangle squares cut from black and white paper A Micron 01 and 05 Pen A Sakura White Gel Pen A White Pencil A Soft Lead Pencil A Box to house all your treasures. All you have to do is gather your materials and put them in a box. You can decorate the box as you like. Maybe you would like to draw Zentangles all over it. I like to carry my kit in my purse and so a box is quite cumbersome. I use a small plastic pouch. It very easily houses all my Zentangle squares, pencils and pens.
Mahe Zehra Husain (Zentangle Inspired Crafts: A Beginners Guide to Zentangle Art and Zentangle Inspired Art and Craft Projects)
Baby, when everything and everyone is telling you that you can't do something, there's still a way. When you get to the crossroads and start feeling like you can do it, but you can't figure out what's next, I want you to whisper this to yourself: Patricia Blackstock Johnson. I want you to remember that if Tab's mama can put a pencil in her mouth to hit record on her tape recorder, what can you not do? Where there's a will, there's a way. All you have to do is have the willpower to keep going. Even when it looks like it's going to be over or the storm is too powerful, honey, stay in a state of gratitude. Give God praise in advance.
Tabitha Brown (Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love, and Freedom (A Feeding the Soul Book))
The other thing that’s happened with writing is that I’m not afraid it will go away. Up until a couple of years ago, I feared that sitting down with paper and pencil revealed too much desire and that for such ambition I would be punished. My vocabulary would contract anorexia, ideas would be born autistic, even titles would not come to flirt with me anymore. I suppose this was tied to that internal judge, the serpent who eats her own tail. She insinuates you’re not good enough; you believe her and try less, ratifying her assessment; so you try even less; and on and on. This snake survives on your dying. Finally, now, the elided words of my wisest writing teacher, the poet David Wojahn, make sense. “Be ambitious,” he said, “for the work.” Not for the in-dwelling editor. That bitch was impossible to please anyway.
Marsha L. Larsen (Friending God: A Woman's Quest through a Social Network)
Dear One Million and Two Dreams, I never knew my life was precious until a selfless human being saved it. I was so used to being caught in the tides, but the moon always untangled me. The moon has always been here with me, and I am forever grateful. The stars left a trail as I follow it to a selfless soul. The night sky was darker than the deep blue sea, but I was granted a night light from the shooting stars. I made one million and one wishes on dandelions, and one of those millions of wishes came true. The never-ending sky seemed like it was falling on me. However, now the endless skies had been lifted and are filled with unlimited opportunities. My wings were clipped, but they grew back. However, they have been clipped again, and the process will continue until I free myself from my past. I made a million wishes, but none of them were on my side. I was exposed to a cut-throat life that spoke a language of hate. The emptiness in my life had more than one million questions. However, I was immune to abandon answers. Although I had one million questions, I received two million answers that were one lie after another. I walked around with one million and one brown paper bags with words written on them in different shades of ink and a dull pencil lead. I have a heavy rush in my heart because I’ve been fighting for so long, and now I can rest. When I think about it, I do not need a million wishes to come true. I feel my lips curving as they form a smile. Once upon a time, I made a million and two wishes, and two of them came true. I have my brother and Nurse Hope in my life—Ember; how much better can life get than this? So much better.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
Writing is a physical art. And writing a book is a lot more like making a complex sculpture out of bronze than writing a whole bunch of reports. What's in your head does not count, not for sculpture, not for book writing. Pencil on paper is what matters. Words on paper, pages and pages, chapter after chapter.
Heather Sellers (Chapter After Chapter: Discover the Dedication and Focus You Need to Write the Book of Your Dreams)
he carried "a pencil and paper with him in case inspiration struck.
Anonymous
Best That You Can Do Peter Allen told me how he was struck by the inspiration for the theme song to the movie Arthur. He was flying into New York one night—a beautiful night. He could see the moon. Bright stars. But he couldn’t see the city because of a very low layer of clouds below. The pilot said, “We’re going to have to circle a few times.” Peter took out a pencil and wrote: When you get caught between the moon and New York City.
Anonymous
He turned to pull the door closed and the warm air from the hall rushed through the narrow opening again. As he saw the yellow paper, the pencil flying, scooped off the desk and, unimpeded by the glassless window, sail out into the night and out of his life, Tom Benecke burst into laughter and then closed the door behind him.
Jack Finney
Fixing problems is like breaking a pencil. It's very hard to break many pencils at one time; however, if you try breaking one at a time it's very easy to do.
James Thomas Kesterson Jr
I’ve used the “out-of-place” idea for years to remind me in the morning of something I thought of during the night. JL: You mean when you’ve had that million-dollar idea— HL: Which is usually worth $1.63 in the morning light. Still, I always felt that idea had to be immortalized. So at first I’d put on the lights, find a pad and pencil, and write it down—then, since I invariably woke up my wife, I started keeping a pad on my night table and writing down the idea in the dark. JL: Could you read your writing in the morning? HL: Not too well. Which was fine, because that inspired me to really solve the problem. Now, whenever I get an idea, I reach out an arm and do something that will be sure to catch my attention in the morning. Usually, I dump all my cigarettes on the floor—when I get out of bed in the morning I can’t miss stepping on those cigarettes and being reminded that I had an idea during the night. JL: Do you ever have trouble remembering what the idea was? HL: Not usually. But if I do feel I need a reminder of the thought itself— JL: You associate the Key Word of the idea to cigarettes. HL: Right! And if I ever manage to stop smoking, I’ll reach over and turn my clock face down, or put it on the floor, or push a book off my night table. JL: Anything that’s out of place, that forces you to look at it and think, “What in the world is that doing there?” will do.
Harry Lorayne (The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play)
Don't let your responsibilities get in your way of relationship. Embrace the time spent with loved ones. Make time for your loved ones. live simply and enjoy little things in life. Don't take things for granted
Veena Sharma (Tenacity: Penciling the Journey and Inking the Destiny)
But you are not ungrateful, you never have been. Always, you could see the whirling constellation of wonders that makes up your life. God, there is just so much to love. Dust motes lit up by stage lights, the creak of a book’s binding when it’s opened for the first time, the ache in the back of your throat from singing too loud, the whirring noise of a light bulb as it’s flicked on, a warm blanket in a cold room, a kiss when you didn’t know you needed one, dark pencils, the wet snuffle of a dog’s nose, strangers who say ‘Bless you’ when you sneeze, mahogany, the dusty silk of flower petals, good lines in bad poems, the watercolour mess of sunset, snow, liquid-ink pens and more. So much more.
Scarlett Curtis (It's Not OK to Feel Blue (and other lies): Inspirational people open up about their mental health)
have a range of differently themed weeks wherein the children are asked to explore different ranges of emotions which give them an opportunity to explore their full artistic potential. Many kids get driven by the comic characters and so they want to attend drawing classes. Such children should be encouraged because they not only stimulate the pictorially original parts of the brain but it is also known to stimulate the creative parts which create stories and text. Encouraging the creativity of the children at a young age helps in inspiring them for the rest of their lives.
Marie Rose (Drawing for Beginners: The Complete Step By Step Beginner's Guide to Amazing Drawing in Less than an Hour (Draw Cool Stuff, Drawing Techniques, How to Draw, Pencil Drawing Book 1))
McCloud withdrew a pencil from his pocket and pointed at the remainder of Thompson’s head. “See this? It’s stippling. These marks on the remainder of the decedent’s skull prove my theory. Gunpowder tattoos indicate distance, at the minimum, six inches. Not impossible for a suicide, but unlikely. My guess, your boy here is a homicide, pure and simple.
Claire O'Sullivan (Romance Under Wraps (Whiskey River Mysteries Book 1))
As an example, shifting your pencil from one side of your desk to the other today could change the gravitational forces on Jupiter enough to shift its position from one side of the Sun to the other a billion years from now. The unpredictability of the solar system over very long times is of course ironic since this was the prototypical system that inspired Laplacian determinism. (Tremaine, 2011)
Steve Keen (Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? (The Future of Capitalism))
This is my Lost Property cupboard theory of the afterlife - when we die we are taken to a great lost property cupboard where all the things we have ever lost have been kept for us - every hairgrip, every button and pencil, every tooth, every earring and key, every key, every pin. All the library books, all the cats that never came back, all the coins, all the watches (which will still be keeping time for us). And perhaps, too, the other less tangible things - tempers and patience (perhaps Patricia´s virginity will be there), religion, meaning, innocence and oceans of time.
Kate Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum)
Many presentations follow a traditional hero’s journey, with the presenter portraying himself or herself as the hero to win over the audience. But the best presentations - the ones that inspire action - are those where the same journey is portrayed, except the audience is the focus. It’s not about the presenter; it’s about the chance that the audience has to become the hero by completing a well-defined task.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
The week before Notes Day, all facilitators attended a training session to help them keep each meeting on track and make sure that everyone—the outgoing, the laid-back, and everyone in between—was heard from. Then, to make sure something concrete emerged, the Working Group designed a set of “exit forms” to be filled out by each session’s participants. Red forms were for proposals, blue forms were for brainstorms, and yellow forms were for something we called “best practices”—ideas that were not action items per se but principles about how we should behave as a company. The forms were simple and specific: Each session got its own set, tailored specifically to the topic at hand, that asked a specific question. For example, the session called “Returning to a ‘Good Ideas Come from Anywhere’ Culture,” had blue exit forms topped with this header: Imagine it’s 2017. We’ve broken down barriers so that people feel safe to speak up. Senior employees are open to new processes. What did we do to achieve this success? Underneath that question were boxes in which attendees could pencil in three answers. Then, after they wrote a general description of each idea, they were asked to go a few steps further. What “Benefits to Pixar” would these ideas bring? And what should be the “Next Steps” to make them a reality? Finally, there was space provided to specify “Who is the best audience for this idea?” and “Who should pitch this idea?
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
Strange satisfaction of organizing pencil crayons and sharpening them (the way I used to enjoy sharpening wax crayons as a kid
Cheyanne Ratnam
I guess pencil crayons are like life; we hope to gain wisdom through our experiences, and sadly many of us learn important lessons later in life - however all that colour we scratched and pressed into our canvases create stories for our children, and grandchildren - things to laugh at as we look back, and hopefully things others can use as examples of lessons of caution, and tales of overcoming negative situations despite the overwhelming odds stacked up against us. Tales of past likes and loves, lessons learned, and the stories about how you met the right person and how you ended up with them - often a winding tale until there's an 'AH-HA' moment of enlightenment, lol. Tales of raw adversity...because rawness is beautiful, and learned wisdom which proves showing weakness is actual bravery. That not everyone you lose is a loss, and that in life, a situation will keep repeating itself until one learns their lesson. As sad as it is to see these pencils being shortened, and the way one tries to preserve what's left as they get shorter and shorter... the new box of crayons which will eventually be bought will continue the storytelling of the old, and add new stories until they themselves expire.
Cheyanne Ratnam
To keep the business going, Disney moved out of his apartment and into the Laugh-O-Gram offices, where he slept on a pile of pillows. This experience also inspired his most enduring creation. “They [mice] used to fight for crumbs in my wastebasket when I worked alone late at night,” he said. “I lifted them out and kept them in wire cages on my desk. I grew particularly fond of one brown house mouse. He was a timid little guy. By tapping him on the nose with my pencil, I trained him to run inside a black circle I drew on my drawing board.” Disney named the mouse Mortimer.
Rees Quinn (Disney)
Luckily (and yep, that’s total sarcasm) Pamela Tolbert stepped in to take over Lane’s class. She’s new to Briar University, and she’s the kind of prof who wants you to make connections and “engage” with the material. If this was a movie, she’d be the young, ambitious teacher who shows up at the inner city school and inspires the fuckups, and suddenly everyone’s putting down their AKs and picking up their pencils, and the end credits scroll up to announce how all the kids got into Harvard or some shit. Instant Oscar for Hilary Swank.
Elle Kennedy (The Deal (Off-Campus, #1))
Away deep in the aim to study himself in the school of the land his ancestors' gravestones flowered, Rip planned to burn his oil on the journey for growth by the hike, the thumb, the hitch, the rod, the freight, the rail, and he x'd New York on a map and pencilled his way to and into and through and under and up and between and over and across states and capitals and counties and cities and towns and villages and valleys and plains and plateaus and prairies and mountains and hills and rivers and roadways and railways and waterways and deserts and islands and reservations and titanic parks and shores and, ocean across to ocean and great lakes down to gulfs, Rip beheld the west and the east and the north and the south of the Brobdingnagian and, God and Christ and Man, it was a pretty damn good grand big fat rash crass cold hot pure mighty lovely ugly hushed dark lonely loud lusty bitchy tender crazy cruel gentle raw sore dear deep history-proud precious place to see, and he sure would, he thought, make the try to see it and smell it and walk and ride and stop and talk and listen in it and go on in it and try to find and feel and hold and know the beliefs in it and the temper and the talents in it and the omens and joys and hopes and frights and lies and laughs and truths and griefs and glows and gifts and glories and glooms and wastes and profits and the pulse and pitch and the music and the magic and the dreams and facts and the action and the score and the scope and span of the mind and the heart and spine and logic and ego and spirit in the soul and the goal of it.
Alan Kapelner (All the Naked Heroes: A Novel of the Thirties)
When was the last time I’d walked into an art store? I couldn’t remember. But this store was like entering Mecca. Every kind of medium you could dream of was there. And the sketch pads alone made me ache to take them all home. There’s something really special about an art store. Here you have colors and blank paper of every size and every color, every saturation and every combination at your fingertips. Everyone walks out of the store with essentially the same thing. But it’s what happens after it all leaves the store . . . the possibilities are endless. I couldn’t possibly count the amount of times that just being in an art store had inspired a new piece, or changed my direction on a current project. I honest-to-God breathed a sigh of relief just being in this store. How in the world had I ever been gone from this world for so long? Does anyone truly know the beauty of a brand-new box of perfectly sharpened, never-been-used colored pencils? Can anyone ever really appreciate the curve of a brand-new sable paintbrush, edge never before dipped into a vibrant cerulean acrylic and swirled across a virgin canvas? Simply put, it’s something I’d never take for granted again.
Alice Clayton (Roman Crazy (Broads Abroad, #1))
Full disclosure, I’ve sketched you before. You’re my muse.” My heart stops beating at that little tidbit. “What? Why?” “Dunno,” he says, biting down on the end of the charcoal pencil and flipping his sketchbook open. “Just saw you, and bam…inspiration hit.
Cora Rose (Waiting for You)
The productions of the pencil present themselves to our eyes as living things; but if we interrogate them, they maintain a dignified silence. It is the same with writing, which knows not what to say to one man, nor what to conceal from another. If you attack it or insult it without a cause, it cannot defend itself; for its author is never present to sustain it. So that he who imagines himself capable of establishing, clearly, and permanently, one single doctrine, by writing alone, IS A GREAT BLOCKHEAD.
Joseph de Maistre (Essai sur le Principe Générateur des Constitutions Politiques et des Autres Institutions Humaines)
Everyone makes mistakes, that's why pencils have erasers.
Kripa Patel
I am like a little pencil in God's hand. He does the writing. The pencil has little to do with it." - Mother Teresa.
Susan Grant (100 Minutes with God: 1 Minute Daily Devotions of Timeless Inspirations)
2 [CRICKET] each of the three upright pieces of wood which form a wicket. (stumps) close of play in a cricket match. 3 [ART] a cylinder with conical ends made of rolled paper or other soft material, used for softening or blending marks made with a crayon or pencil. 4 chiefly NORTH AMERICAN used in relation to political campaigning: his jibes at his opponents may have won him some support on the stump early in his campaign | [as modifier] an inspiring stump speaker. [ referring to the use of a tree stump, from which an orator would speak.]
Angus Stevenson (Oxford Dictionary of English)
Just write...be it with pen or pencil...no matter if you use paper, computer, or a smartphone...get your words out and tell your story!
Tyrone Eddins Jr.
Simplicity, balance, character, direction and relation of the limbs to each other, with their proportions and general symmetry of the whole, must be apprehended in a flash and put down in long lines, without lingering on less important details of form, for there is little time to hesitate in making a ten-minutes sketch. The quicker we draw, the better, so long as we can keep up the tension of our eyes, brain and hand all working together at the same time. The moment one of these three faculties gets out of gear or tired, the vitality of the drawing is lost. An intelligent model in a good pose inspires us enormously to produce an artistic and living drawing. A drawing done in a few minutes, in a red-hot fever of excitement and with concentrated observation, following the contour of the form from start to finish, is far more living than the often elaborated drawings of a cataleptic, relaxed figure, dumped upon the traditional throne, so often seen in art schools ; for the essence of life figure drawing lies in the outline. There is no short cut, no royal road to excellence : the only way is by persistent study and cultivation of visual memory.
Borough Johnson (The Technique of Pencil Drawing (Dover Art Instruction))
A competent artist is never discouraged by the worn surface of a pencil's writing point; he/she always has the option of shaving away the worn surface to create a lovely detailed portrait.
Bruce Mbanzabugabo (The Inspirer, Book of Quotes)
It was when I was in just such deep misery that I felt my energies revive, and I said to myself: In spite of everything I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. And from that moment everything has seemed transformed for me; and now I have started, and my pencil has become a little more docile with every day.' In this way, with a dramatic flourish and a hinted resurrection simile, Van Gogh announced his new vocation to Theo.
Nathaniel Harris (The masterworks of Van Gogh)
Everyone needs a place to let go and unwind from life, mine happens to be where pencil meets paper.
Brandy Nacole (Deep in the Hollow (Chindi #1))
I love sharing a lil piece of me! My thoughts and views or cares and concerns…it’s therapy for me. I write to let off steam usually, it helps to talk through the pen or pencil... Frustration and anxiety is released and a cleansing breath is allowed and greatly welcome.
D'Juana L. Manuel-Smith (Inspired & Motivated: An Emotional Journey Back To Me)
This is not a how-to book. It is a how-to-think-about-how-to book. In it I bombard you with images and metaphors with never a photograph or diagram in sight. Your mind's eye will create all the images in this text, and each mind is unique. Getting these, and other images, down on paper will provide you with fun, frustration, joy and despair. Like life,
Judith Mason (The Mind's Eye: An Introduction to Making Images)
But the best presentations—the ones that inspire action—are those where the same journey is portrayed, except the audience is the focus. It’s not about the presenter; it’s about the chance that the audience has to become the hero by completing a well-defined task.
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
A man-beast?” Portia asked, her eyes widening. “Oh, I do like the sound of this.” She put pencil to paper again. Brooke leaned over her shoulder. “Are you taking notes for your novel or adding to your list?” “That depends,” she said coolly, “on what manner of beast we’re discussing.” She looked to Denny. “Some sort of large, ferocious cat, I hope? All fangs and claws and fur?” “Once again I must disappoint you,” Denny replied. “No fangs, no claws. It’s a stag.” “Oh, prongs! Even better.” More scribbling. “What do they call this . . . this man-beast? Does it have a name?” “Actually,” said Denny, “most people in the region avoid speaking of the creature at all. It’s bad luck, they say, just to mention it. And a sighting of the beast . . . well, that’s an omen of death.” “Excellent. This is all so inspiring.” Portia’s pencil was down to a nub. “So is this a creature like a centaur, divided at the waist? Four hooves and two hands?” “No, no,” Cecily said. “He’s not half man, half beast in that way. He transforms, you see, at will. Sometimes he’s a man, and other times he’s an animal.” “Ah. Like a werewolf,” Portia said. Brooke laughed heartily. “For God’s sake, would you listen to yourselves? Curses. Omens. Prongs. You would honestly entertain this absurd notion? That Denny’s woods are overrun with a herd of vicious man-deer?” “Not a herd,” Denny said. “I’ve never heard tell of more than one.” “We don’t know that he’s vicious,” Cecily added. “He may be merely misunderstood.” “And we certainly can’t call him a man-deer. That won’t do at all.” Portia chewed her pencil thoughtfully. “A werestag. Isn’t that a marvelous title? The Curse of the Werestag.” Brooke turned to Luke. “Rescue me from this madness, Merritt. Tell me you retain some hold on your faculties of reason. What say you to the man-deer?” “Werestag,” Portia corrected. Luke circled the rim of his glass with one thumb. “A cursed, half-human creature, damned to an eternity of solitude in Denny’s back garden?” He shot Cecily a strange, fleeting glance. “I find the idea quite plausible.
Tessa Dare (How to Catch a Wild Viscount)
Even at her sickest, she tried to create at least one drawing every single day. Sometimes she drew stuff out of her head. Other times, she sketched nurses and orderlies and other patients. Once, she was so tired that she could barely sit up, but she struggled through a detailed drawing of her own scrawny fingers holding a pencil.
Paul Acampora (I Kill the Mockingbird)
The creative impulse, the thing that gets deep inside me, goes from brain to the fingertips. When you're writing by hand, even when you're not consciously thinking about it, you're constructing sentences in the best way possible. And I still get the thrill of the clean pad of notepaper and the pencil all sharpened.
Anita Shreve
Which it literally could be. Many of history’s greatest thinkers, leaders, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs found some of their greatest inspiration going for walks. Beethoven used to take walks carrying blank pages of sheet music and a pencil. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth used to write as he took walks around a lake where he lived. Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle would lecture their students while taking long walks with them, often working out their ideas at the same time. Two thousand years later, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say, “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” Einstein refined many of his theories about the universe while walking around the Princeton University campus. The writer Henry David Thoreau would say, “The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life)
These ideas (taken in their general sense) were not unknown to the ancient philosophers : they keenly felt the impotency, I had almost said the nothingness, of writing, in great institutions; but no one of them has seen this truth more clearly, or expressed it more happily, than Plato, whom we always find the first upon the track of all great truths. According to him, “the man who is wholly indebted to writing for his instruction, will only possess the appearance of wisdom. The word, he adds, is to writing, what the man is to his portrait. The productions of the pencil present themselves to our eyes as living things; but if we interrogate them, they maintain a dignified silence. It is the same with writing, which knows not what to say to one man, nor what to conceal from another. If you attack it or insult it without a cause, it cannot defend itself; for its author is never present to sustain it. So that he who imagines himself capable of establishing, clearly and permanently, one single doctrine, by writing alone, is a great blockhead. If he really possessed the true germs of truth, he would not indulge the thought, that with a little black liquid and a pen he could cause them to germinate in the world, defend them from the inclemency of the season, and communicate to them the necessary efficacy. As for the man who undertakes to write laws or civil constitutions, and who fancies that, because he has written them, he is able to give them adequate evidence and stability, whoever he may be, a private man or legislator, he disgraces himself, whether we say it or not; for he has proved thereby that he is equally ignorant of the nature of inspiration and delirium, right and wrong, good and evil. Now, this ignorance is a reproach, though the entire mass of the vulgar should unite in its praise.
Joseph de Maistre (The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions)