If you sit down and you start writing, it's like getting in very cold water and you're in. You might as well paddle around for a minute. - Anne Lamott

I saw a button pin once that said: “I’m not tense. I’m just very, very alert.

Most people's intuitions are drowned out by folk sayings. We have a moment of real feeling or insight, and then we come up with a folk saying that captures the insight in a kind of wash. The intuition may be real and ripe, fresh with possibilities, but the folk saying is guaranteed to be a cliche, stale and self-contained.

"You have to be a warrior and say, "Maybe it's everyone else's system, but it's not mine." (from her recent interview here, on Goodreads)"