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"These days, the wages of sin depend on what kind of deal you make with the publisher." ~ Ivern Ball in The Wall Street Journal

Attached Link: http://www.charlesghigna.com/who.html

"The path to inspiration starts beyond the trails we've known. Each writer's block is not a rock, but just a stepping stone." ~Charles Ghigna aka Father Goose Charles Ghigna (aka "Father Goose") is a poet, children's author, and nationally syndicated feature writer who helps promote the love of children's literature by speaking at schools, colleges, conferences, and libraries. Charles is the author of more than thirty books of poetry for children and adults. His award-winning books and poems have been featured on ABC's "Good Morning America," selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club, featured in the Scholastic Book Club, received the Parents' Choice Book Award, SEBA Book Award, the Helen Keller Literary Award, and the Alabama Library Association Book Award. Charles has served as poetry editor of The English Journal for the National Council of Teachers of English and has presented his poetry programs at the Library of Congress, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and at hundreds of schools, colleges, conferences, libraries, and book fairs throughout the U.S. and overseas.

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.

• Robert Penn Warren

Message edited on: 06/03/2005 00:49

"Absurdly improbable things happen in real life as well as in weak literature." -Ada Leverson

"Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us." ~ Oscar Wilde

"A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself." ~ Louis L'Amour

"We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you." ~Unknown

"Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." Red Smith

"What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible." ~Theodore Roethke

"It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends." ~ Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

"Drawing on my fine command of the language, I said nothing." ~Robert Benchley

"All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography." ~Federico Fellini

"In a good play, everyone is in the right." ~Fredrich Hebbel

"It takes an awful lot of time for me to write anything. I have endless drafts, one after another; and I try out 50, 75, or a hundred variations on a single line sometimes. I work on the process of refining low-grade ore. I get maybe a couple of nuggets of gold out of 50 tons of dirt. It is tough for me. No, I am not inspired."

~ James Dickey

"The secret is to start a story near the ending." ~Chris Offut

"They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves." ~ Lillian Hellman

"No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things." ~Channing Pollock (1880-1946) Playwright and lyricist

Attached Link: http://www.absolutewrite.com/screenwriting/schirmer/island.htm

No Man is an Island, Film Fuss by Mary Schirmer (weekly, screenwriting): The talented screenwriter Julius J. Epstein (Casablanca) said that when Hollywood producers asked him about the theme of his movies, he always replied: No man is an island. Epstein said their answer was always, Oh.

"Sharpen your interest in two major subjects: life and people. You will only gather information from a source if you are interested in it." ~ Jim Rohn

"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." ~Don Marquis

"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances in which it is used." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Words are things; and a small drop of ink Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." ~Lord Byron

"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother." -- Henry Ward Beecher "We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents." -- Henry Ward Beecher "He opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn't afraid to into the basement by himself. He cut himself shaving, but no one kissed it or got excited about it. It was understood when it rained, he got the car and brought it around to the door. When anyone was sick, he went out to get the prescription filled. He took lots of pictures ... but he was never in them." -- Erma Bombeck "I have always looked at life as a voyage, mostly wonderful, sometimes frightening. In my family and friends I have discovered treasure more valuable than gold." -- Jimmy Buffet "If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either." -- Dick Cavett "The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children." -- G. K. Chesterton "The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself." -- Gilbert Keith Chesterton "Fatherhood is pretending the present you love the most is soap-on-a-rope." -- Bill Cosby "You know, fathers just have a way of putting everything together. " -- Erika Cosby "Be kind to thy father, for when thou were young, who loved thee so fondly as he? He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue, and joined in thy innocent glee. " -- Margaret Courtney "Role modeling is the most basic responsibility of parents. Parents are handing life's scripts to their children, scripts that in all likelihood will be acted out for the rest of the children's lives." -- Stephen R. Covey "People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally 'being lived.' They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates, and society." -- Stephen R. Covey "What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father. " -- Mary Mapes Dodge "To her the name of father was another name for love. " -- Fanny Fern "Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach." -- Arnold Glasow "When Charles first saw our child Mary, he said all the proper things for a new father. He looked upon the poor little red thing and blurted, 'She's more beautiful than the Brooklyn Bridge. " -- Helen Hayes "To be a successful father...there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years. " -- Ernest Hemingway "The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other." -- Burton Hillis "I am not caused by my history--my parents, my childhood and development. These are mirrors in which I may catch glimpses of my image." -- James Hillman "There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson. " -- Victor Hugo "You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was." -- Irish Proverb