Love is a Dream

"I had the best dream last night. I was so happy, content, and in love. But alas, it was only a dream."

- Chase March

Kids - Defined

"I love kids. They’re short, highly emotional people who don’t know anything. They rely on their creativity and imagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat."

- Arlen Faber from the film "The Answer Man"

You Have Everything (or can anyway)

"Wait. You might have glossed over that last paragraph-perhaps because it's so short but especially because it's so challenging.

What I'm saying is that one person can make a video that reaches fifty million viewers.

What I'm saying is that one person can invent a pricing model that turns an industry upside down.

What I'm saying is that one person-okay, what I really me is you-has everything. Everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself. The people around you realize this, and they are ready to follow if you're ready to lead"

- Seth Godin from the book Tribes: We Need You to Leads Us

Eat at Home, Read the Books

"For the price of a dinner in this town, you can buy all the books. So eat at home and read the books."

 - Jack Rabinovitch as he announced the winner of the Giller Prize tonight.

Very cool!

Understanding Comes Through the Process of Writing

English: Hunter S. Thompson, Miami Book Fair International, 1988 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"One of the few ways I can almost be certain I’ll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can’t avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it."

- Hunter S. Thompson

The Start of it All

“A commonplace book is a place to collect extracts, poems, aphorisms, etc, for future reference. It is a place to reflect, to bounce ideas around, to observe and record. And that is what I plan to do.”
Chase’s Commonplace Book. September 3, 2004.

This was how I started my original commonplace book four years ago.

Wow, time sure flies! I only wrote 13 entries in between the covers of that book and then I started to record the entries on the computer. Right now, my collection includes 328 entries.

I didn’t record song lyrics when I started this series. I only decided to do so once I started this blog. I wanted to make sure that I would not run out of entries. But the good thing is that I am constantly coming across quotations and scribbling them down somewhere. I then add them to my Word file.

Now I comb through my Word file to find what I want to post up every week. I then try to find a photo to go with the quote and then post that up too.

I’m glad I started this blog. It really is that best way to collect and organize my commonplace book. And who said that a book had to be a book. This format is perfect for it.

Great Answer

Why do you write strong female characters?

Because you're still asking me that question.

- Joss Whedon

Always a Subtext

"The audience knows that people rarely, if ever, understand themselves, and if they do, they’re incapable of complete and honest self-explanation.  There’s always a subtext."

- Robert McKee. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting. ReganBooks: New York, 1997. pg 377

Most Important Word to Common

Image by mp3waxx.com via Flickr

"My journey in love has led me to this place: of loving with my whole heart, of embracing the opportunity to build a life with someone else. I read somewhere that on average people have about sixty thousand words in their vocabulary, but that on most days we use only a fraction of them. As someone who creates with language, I'm fascinated by the shades of meaning and the range of sounds that different words can create. For all the words I may use in an average day, though, the most important word in my vocabulary is love."

Common from the memoir "One Day It'll All Make Sense"

Why I Don't Nap

Shadow of a Lonely Man (Photo credit: Wha'ppen)

"I don't like to take naps. I don't like to wake up more than once a day. 'Cause when I first wake up I get that shock of who I am and everything. I... I really don't like to do that more than once a day."

from The Lonely Man film starring Steve Martin.

Common's Regret

Common (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

"One of my greatest regrets about my music is that my early albums include lyrics that might be considered homophobic . . .

Here I was claiming the title of "conscious artist," and I had this huge blind spot in my consciousness. I never wanted to be guilty of mismeasuring someone else's humanity. I've had it done to me, and I know the pain it causes. Hearing from that fan opened up my eyes."

- Common from his memoir "One Day It'll All Make Sense"

How Do You Define Art?

Image via Wikipedia

"If art was defined simply by the ability to draw, then my inkjet printer would be a greater artist than Michelangelo."

- Curtis Verdun

Love as a Verb, Noun, and Salutation

Cover of One Day It'll All Make Sense

I use love to describe my relation to God and to family and to friends. I use it in my music. I use it as verb.I use it as a noun. I use it as a way to say good-bye. I picked up that last way of using love from my guy Dart.  I think he started saying it in the 1990s, when it seemed like everyone was saying "peace" - peace this, peace that. Why not say love instead. After all, love is the best means to peace. That idea stuck with me."

- Common from his memoir "One Day It'll All Make Sense" pg 272

Creating Something Delicate and Fleeting

Cover of Common

"When I'm doing a freestyle, my mind is working faster than my mouth, and my memory is all but shut down. You can ask me what I said three minutes after I finish, and I won't be able to tell you the first thing about it. Sometimes you create for posterity; you create with that sense of timelessness. But sometimes you create something that's so delicate-so fleeting-that it can last only for a moment. To me, that kind of creation is no less beautiful, no less miraculous. It's just its own thing."

- Common from his memoir "One Day It'll All Make Sense" pg 44.

Imran Yusuf Delivers Some Laughs

Stories Voice What Can't Be

Image via Wikipedia

"I have said that feelings are the hardest of human responses to put into language. Stories express feelings we recognize, and permit us to identify them, to experience them in language."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 105

Stimulating Conversation

Cover via Amazon"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after."

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh from 'Gift From the Sea'

Discover the Treasure in Daily Life

Image via Wikipedia"Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."

- Henry Miller

While It Lasts

Cover of The Razor's Edge"Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.

- W. Somerset Maugham from The Razor's Edge

Hide Your Sources

Image via Wikipedia"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

- Albert Einstein

What?

Shouldn't we give credit where credit is due?

I understand that creative people can be influenced by everyting around them, and maybe we can hide those influences in our own creative work.

I guess that is what Einstein meant.