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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Chang-rae Lee

I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.

Writing, Me, Think

It’s perhaps more laudable to simply keep heading out into the world, than always tilting to leave one’s mark on it.

inspirational-attitude

Does any (MFA) program really improve anybody, as much as simply identifying them? And, after identifying them, not ruining them?

creative-writing, identity, mfa-programs, writing-craft

Does any program really improve anybody, as much as simply identifying them? And, after identifying them, not ruining them?

creative-writing, identity, mfa-programs, writing, writing-craft

He should have had more faith in himself rather than give in to his weaker qualities, in particular his overeagerness to please and aversion to conflict and a lifelong infatuation with hope, which had him dreaming more than doing

quig, self-awareness, self-motivation

It was in the work that she came closest to finding herself, by which we don’t mean gaining “self-knowledge” or understanding one’s “true nature” but rather how at some point you can see most plainly that this is what you do, this is how you fit in the wider ecology

on-such-a-full-sea, self-awareness

It was in the work that she came closest to finding herself, by which we don’t mean gaining “self-knowledge” or understanding one’s “true nature” but rather how at some point you can see most plainly that this is what you do, this is how you fit in the wider ecology.

career, fan, self-awareness

Our tainted world looms within us, every one.

cancer, disease, fate, sin

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

past, present, time, value, yesterday

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

embodiment, humanity, inspirational, self

Her endeavor was misguided and wrong and maybe plain crazy, akin to someone waking up one day and deciding he’s going to scale Kilimanjaro because he can’t stop imagining the view from the top, the picture so arresting and beautiful that it too soon delivers him to a precarious ledge, where he can no longer turn back. And while it’s easy to say this is a situation to be avoided, isn’t this what we also fear and crave simultaneously, that some internal force which defies understanding might remake us into the people we dream we are?

adventure, dream, fear, rationality

Imagination might not be limitless. It’s still tethered to the universe of what we know.

imagination, thought