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D Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with D. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All D Quotes

“Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed. Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction. Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page? Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it. Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things. Play with syntax. Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better – if you have to say it, you will. Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong. If you ask a question, don’t answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time). Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum: One. Don’t be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don’t love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.”

“Don't you agree that there must be something radically wrong with a civilisation, society, theory of life - call it what you like in which a hard-working, serious young woman like myself cannot obtain, without enormous difficulty, expense, or infliction of pain on others, a quiet, clean, pleasant room in which she can work, dream her dreams, write out her thoughts, and keep her few treasures in peace.”

“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”

“Don't you believe in nonviolence?' I asked. "'Yes,' said Miss Minnie, 'when the other parties are nonviolent, too. But when I have just come out of a funeral parlor from looking at a little small black boy shot three times by a full-grown cop, I think it is about time I raised my pocketbook and strike at least one blow for freedom.”

“Don’t you believe that Jacob can be healed?” some persisted, pressuring Elizabeth to believe—just believe—and Jacob would be healed. The underlying message was that Elizabeth’s faith was not strong enough to save her son. I remembered then the same kind of statements David and I had heard when he was undergoing cancer treatment, when several well-intentioned people informed David that all he had to do to rid his body of cancer was to believe he was healed. I’d resented the implications then, and I resented them for my daughter now. People die. Good people like David die too young, and innocent little children die, and the strongest faith in the world cannot keep anyone on this earth forever. If only the same Christians professing their faith in healing could clearly see the flip side of that faith, that earth was not where we ultimately belonged. If Jacob died, he would be going Home.”

“Don’t you dare pity her. She traded a suffering soul for a throne of bones. She exchanged watchful eyes for a court of her own. The seasons of the earth depended on the very breath she took. She had death wrapped around her fingers and spring at her beck and call and the ruler of the heavens tasked with finding her. She turned the world upside down to find freedom. The daughter of flowers escaped her prison made out of roots and thorns and became the queen of death and forged her new home out of shadows and power.”

“Don’t you dare stop growing. Don’t you dare stop glowing. Keep being that dazzling beam of light you are. Shine bright, thrive on, and let your brilliance light up the world around you. Your journey is just warming up, and the best is yet to come. Stay radiant, stay unstoppable, and never let anyone or anything dim your sparkle. So go on, glow-getter, keep sparkling, and keep shining—because the world needs your light!”