I stole this amazing quote from the Facebook of a good friend. I just had to share it.

“For that alone, I can have no regrets. Nah, son, fuck law school. And fuck the M.B.A. I’ll never have. And fuck all that Chaucer and Cervantes and Proust I might never get around to reading. On a given day, I learn something that you didn’t know and then, my authority drawn only from scrawl on pages of a pocket notebook, I write it up clean so the rest of you can get your hands filthy with ink, reading my righteous shit. In the less fevered lobes of my brain, it was as pure as that.”
— David Simon

Simon, btw, is an author and former Baltimore Sun reporter. He’s the brain behind HBO’s The Wire (which I’ve never seen but sounds cool). The quote is from his recent Esquire essay, “A Newspaper Can’t Love You Back,” which is worth the read.

“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”
— H.G. Wells

This could be interpreted many ways. Since I like to focus on journalism and blogs and all that fun stuff, I’ll throw out this advice to all the reporters and editors who’ve lost their jobs, to all the sell-outs and dreamers deferred who’ve given up and to all the nay-sayers who believe it can’t be done. It’s always worth getting back up to try again.

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
— Muriel Rukeyser

“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.”
— Tom Stoppard

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
—Winston Churchill

“A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.”
— Bo Bennett

“Journalists need three things.
The first is passion. Why are you doing this? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Figure that out, and devote as much attention as possible to those parts of your job. I still think journalism is the greatest racket in the world. You have a license to snoop, to ask questions of anyone.
The second thing is determination. Make yourself known and make your passions known. Push yourself and others to get space and time to explore your interests.
The third thing is persistence. It’s a virtue. What we do is not for wimps. Work hard and work smart. To take over a beat and really do something with it, you have to do your homework.”
— Ken Wells, page-one editor, The Wall Street Journal.

(Via Cleveland SPJ)

“Dissatisfaction is a great starting point, for it is right there that we have the most power, strength, and energy to push change through.”
— David DeNotaris

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright

“Don’t be afraid if things seem difficult in the beginning. That’s only the initial impression. The important thing is not to retreat; you have to master yourself.”
— Olga Korbut