Stephen Covey (Stephen Richards Covey) Quotes
If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, we're tied to that which is infinite.
Quotes to Explore
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One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
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One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.
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Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
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I wish I had the billions of dollars that George Soros has that he has used to fund Democratic causes in the past.
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He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.
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The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I'd make all the same mistakes - only sooner.
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When we come to images or memories or thoughts, speculation, while always closely related to practice, is more explicit, and it is in fact not immediately obvious that such processes can be described in any sense as practical.
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I've always been very open with my emotions. Actually, that's got me into a lot of trouble, too, in the past.
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I fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song - you take it all with you.
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Everywhere in my house are these little things that have meanings and make me think of great memories.
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The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.
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I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.
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The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.
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There were people in Cuba who truly had substantial things to gain from revolution. There were people who had things to lose in the revolution. I think they're all allowed to have their memories of what happened.
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On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.
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Action set pieces are my absolute favorite thing to write. I'm pretty much always in the mood to do them, but music certainly helps the process. I usually brainstorm out the dynamics and choreography of a fight to music beforehand - it gives me the little sparks of imagination when I get to the gaps in my own creativity.
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I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.
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People don't realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.
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Forgiveness allowed me to wash my burdened past away.
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Wrestling introduced me to the idea that my body has a purpose besides trying to look five years younger for the first time.
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If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
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A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.
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If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, we're tied to that which is infinite.
