Every year, I add a quote to my weekly planner. Sometimes it’s inspirational or about writing or by a famous person in the news. A few years ago, I started typing these up to share with a group of good friends. And, of course, I share them with you!
2022 Motto: Do Big Things
January:
“I’m not making resolutions for the new year. I’m making plans.” Dorie Greenspan
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.” Stephen Hawking
“It’s a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to left himself up by his own bootstraps.” Martin Luther King Jr.
“Life is all about balance. You don’t always need to be getting stuff done. Sometimes, it’s perfectly okay and absolutely necessary to shut down, kick back, and do nothing.” Lori Deschene
February:
“A disco ball is hundreds of pieces of broken glass put together to make a magical ball of light. You aren’t broken. You are a disco ball.” Judi Hollar
“Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal fault by concealing evidence they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
“I do not think that it is naïve to think that it is the tiny particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance.” Madeline L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” Oscar Wilde
March:
“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” Ronald Reagan
“Before you argue with someone, ask yourself is that person even mentally mature enough to grasp the concept of a different perspective? Because, if not, there is absolutely no point.” Helen Mirren
“A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others … It gives a relish and facility for successfully pursing the unsolved.” Abraham Lincoln
“It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.” Madeline Albright
“Note to self: All you have to do is show up. Be late. Be scared. Be a mess. Be weird. Be confused. Just be there. You’ll figure out the rest as you go.” Nanea Hoffman
April:
“A health desire for wealth is not greed. It’s a desire for life.” Jen Sincero
“Having experienced both, I am not sure which is worse: intense feeling or the absence of it.” Margaret Atwood, Blind Assassin
“A fact is information minus emotion. An opinion is information plus experience. Ignorance is an opinion lacking information. And stupidity is an opinion that ignores fact.” Unknown
“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” Margaret Atwood
May:
“Go into the world and do well. More importantly, go into the world and do good.” Minor Myers
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” Ruth Bader Ginsberg
“The circulation of ideas is to civilization what the circulation of blood is to the human body.” Alexis de Tocqueville
“The future glides into us, so as to remake itself within us, long before it occurs.” Ranier Maria Rilke
June:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.” Walt Whitman
“The idea that us being the only developed country where this happens routinely especially in terms of mass shootings is somehow the result of the design of the doorways on our school buildings is the definition of insanity, if not the definition of denial.” Pete Buttigieg
“The first person you should think of pleasing in writing a book is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and readers can and will come later.” Patricia Highsmith
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Plato
“More is lost by indecision than the wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.” Marcus Tullius Cicero
July:
“To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?” Emile M. Cioran
“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain
“The big misconception is that you need to be motivated to get rolling. You don’t. Motivation follows action. You don’t need to feel good to get going. You need to get going to give yourself a chance at feeling good.” Brad Stulberg
“I am a writer. If I seem cold, it’s because I’m surrounded by drafts.” Unknown
“It’s not enough to be nice in life. You have got to have nerve.” George O’Keefe
“Any public figure should always, always be free from violence, intimidation, and harassment, but should never have to be free from criticism, or people exercising their First Amendment rights.” Pete Buttigieg
“No matter how impossible a situation may seem, a super confident person who believes in something without a doubt is a force of nature that can inspire you.” Jen Sincero
“Growth and comfort do not co-exist.” Unknown
August:
“So much of life is invisible, inscrutable: layers of thoughts, feelings, and outward events entwined with secrecies, ambiguities, ambivalences, obscurities, darknesses.” Laurie Sheck
“I have lived a thousand lives and I have loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time, because I read.” George RR Martin
“The only way to teach history, to write history, to bring people into the magic of transforming yourself into other times, is through the vehicle of story.” David McCullough
“A poem will not stop a bullet, a novel cannot defuse a bomb, but writers can still sing the truth and name the lies. We must work to overturn the false narratives of tyrants, populists, and fools by telling better stories than they do – stories within which people might actually want to live.” Salmon Rushdie
September
“There is nothing stronger than a woman who has rebuilt herself.” Hannah Gadsby
“We are all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” Charles Bukowski
“Read read read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write.” William Faulkner
October:
“I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of man the right to tell another kind of man what they must do.” Chief Joseph, Nez Pierce
“A little talent is a good thing to have if you to be a writer. But the only real requirement is that ability to remember every scar.” Stephen King
“I made a pact with myself when I set out to start writing that I might not publish a book, but if I start the book, I’m going to finish the book. Don’t give up.” Hugh Holton
“I will now live my life with the inventiveness of an engineer who drives his locomotive off the tracks. No more beaten paths; improvisation is the rule.” Osman Lins
November:
“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.” Ursula K. LeGuin
“We need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in.” Desmond Tutu
“Forgive yourself for finding hard things hard.” Katherine May
“Just because we know how things will go doesn’t mean we like how things will go.” Karen Mangia
“The simple act of paying attending can take you a long way.” Keanu Reeves
December:
“To invite someone to your table is to take care of their happiness as long as they are under your roof.” Jean-Anthelme Savarin
“Life is a bicycle. In order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Albert Einstein
“The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.” Plato
“And one day, just like that, you’ll rediscover your light. You’ll embrace your inner warrior, you’ll snatch your power back, and the whole game will change.” Unknown
“Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today’s Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday.” Gladys Taber
Connecting. Creating. 
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