What Matters Quotes - Page 23

• Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

  Anne Enright

  Real, Writing, Fiction

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn't even matter if it's true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it.

  David Levithan

  Believe, Feels, Ifs

  David Levithan (2013). “Every Day”, p.36, Egmont UK

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• The ability to stand by one's principles, to live with integrity and faith according to one's belief-that is what matters, that is the difference between a contribution and a commitment. That devotion to true principle in our individual lives, in our homes and families, and in all places that we meet and influence other people-that devotion is what God is ultimately requesting of us.

  Howard W. Hunter

  Integrity, Home, Commitment

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• One must be frank to be relevant.

  Corazon Aquino

  Relevant, Frank

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• What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.

  Malcolm Mclaren

  Life Changing, Fearless, Culture

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• It won't matter who my friends were; it won't matter my endorsements; what matters is my heart's response to him.

  Mike Bickle

  Heart, Endorsements, Response

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• We strive toward a goal, and whether we achieve it or not is important, but it's not what's most important. What matters is how we move toward that goal.

  Scott Jurek

  Moving, Goal, Important

  Scott Jurek, Steve Friedman (2012). “Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness”, p.227, A&C Black

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• Years ago I read an interview with Paula Fox in which she said that in writing, truth is just as important as story. Reading that interview was the first time I really understood that there's no point in trying to impress people with my cleverness when I can just try to write honestly about what matters most to me.

  Molly Antopol

  Reading, Writing, Years

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• Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

  Mary Oliver

  Mind, Let Me, Standing Still

  Mary Oliver (2006). “Thirst: Poems”, p.8, Beacon Press

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• To write well about the elegant world you have to know it and experience it to the depths of your being... what matters is not whether you love it or hate it, but only to be quite clear about your position regarding it.

  Italo Calvino

  Hate, Writing, Depth

  Italo Calvino (2013). “Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985”, p.47, Princeton University Press

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• All you can usually say about a poem or a picture is, 'Look at it, listen to it.' Whether you listen to a piece of music or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.

  Basil Bunting

  Jugs, Looks, Sculpture

  Basil Bunting (1999). “Basil Bunting on Poetry”

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• What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.

  Paul Tough

  Children, Character, Self Confidence

  Paul Tough (2012). “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What matters is who we are, not who we beat.

  Tom Shadyac

  Who We Are, Matter, Beats

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• Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissingthe tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.

  Margaret Atwood

  Hands, Gardening, Earth

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.277, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experiences of shaping that artwork. The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it'd dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is wahtever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work.

  David Bayles

  Art, Jobs, Attitude

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• As Hitler himself later enunciated, it matters not how idiotic the creed, what matters is the firmness with which it is enunciated.

  A. N. Wilson

  Creeds, Firmness, Idiotic

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• The head is what matters. The rest of the body plays the part of antennae making life possible for people and life itself is inside the skull.

  Alberto Giacometti

  Play, Skulls, People

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• You'll be alive', he pointed out. 'That's what matters. Enjoy what you have, every little detail of wherever you are. Don't focus on where you aren't.

  Richelle Mead

  Focus, Details, Alive

  Richelle Mead (2010). “Vampire Academy: Last Sacrifice”, p.125, Penguin UK

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• It does not matter whether you win or lose, what matters is whether I win or lose!

  Steven Weinberg

  Funny, Winning, Doe

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• You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Trying, Matter, Failing

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• This doesn't just involve you, honey. If it did, then what you suggest might be the best option. But it involves Shea and, by proxy, everyone at KGI because now you and your sister both are part of us. We don't run from a fight. It's not what KGI is about. KGI is about family. It's about protecting what matters the most to us. It's about never letting anyone take what is ours. You and Shea are ours now, we'll protect you with our last breaths.

  Maya Banks

  Running, Fighting, Might

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• What matters is not to know the world but to change it.

  Frantz Fanon

  World, Social Justice, Knows

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• What matters is hard work, and emotional intelligence.

  Millard Drexler

  Hard Work, Emotional, Matter

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• Some books make us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is written.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Honesty, Book

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• But there's so much that was a lie, it's hard to figure out what was true, what was real, what matters.

  Veronica Roth

  Real, Lying, Figures

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