Quotes on Firsts

Clients say, 'What's your strategy,' and I say, 'Ask me what I believe first.' That's a far more enduring answer.

How often I have tried to tell writing students that the first thing a writer must do is love the reader and wish the reader well. The writer must trust the reader to be at least as intelligent as he is. Only in such well wishing and trust, only when the writer feels he is writing a letter to a good friend, only then will the magic happen.

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay. I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand.

Even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first stirrings of speech in her child, she lets it handle the "things" of that particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. "We give our children guns and computer games," Wendy said. "They gave their children the land."

The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.

All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.

The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.

It is a brave man who is the first to sit down during a standing ovation.

My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

The first and last task of aleader is to keep hope alive.

In order to be happy we must first possess inner contentment; and inner contentment doesn't come from having all we want; but rather from wanting and appreciating being grateful for all we have.

We first observe facts, then generalise, and then draw conclusions or principles.

Not-knowing is true knowledge. _x000D_ _x000D_ Presuming to know is a disease._x000D_ _x000D_ First realize that you are sick;_x000D_ _x000D_ then you can move toward health.

We have in England a curious belief in first-rate people, meaning all the people we do not know; and this consoles us for the undeniable second-rateness of the people we do know.

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

Know how to keep anticipation alive: always strive to feed it, by letting the much promise more, and the one achievement be the announcement only of a greater. Put not all your reserves into the first throw; the great trick is to dole out strength, and to dole out mind, in such a fashion as to bring forward increasingly the fulfillment of what was expected of you.

To exercise no-thought and rest in nothing is the first step toward resting in Tao. To start from nowhere and follow no road is the first step toward attaining Tao.

Peace is not merely the absence of warfare, any more than true health is simply the absence of disease. Nor is peace simply a quiet state of equilibrium-impossible to achieve in an evolving system. Though refraining from harm is an essential first step, lasting peace is created by actively redressing harm done. Peace is a creative process of actively joining I and thou into a co-creative we. It requires authentic communication, empathic listening, and wildly creative solutions.