After all, they knew that to be real each had
To find for himself, his earth, his sky, his sea. 
                                         Wallace Stevens

You cannot stay on the summit forever,
you have to come down again . . .
So why bother in the first place? Just this: what is
above knows what is below, but what is
below does not know what is above.
One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no
longer but one has seen. There is an art of
conducting oneself in the lower regions by the
memory of what one saw higher up.
When one can no longer see, one can
at least still know.

Rene Daumal,
Mount Analogue

I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught–not like what I had seen–shapes and ideas so familiar to me that it hadn’t occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and to start to say things that were my own.

George O’Keeffe
Some Memories of Drawing

A home with twelve hearths is a home without a heart, deeply confused.
It may be easier to lasso the wind than to find a sustaining story for the American West. Still, as storytellers it is our obligation to keep trying.

Tim Egan
Lasso the Wind

It’s an issue of telling your life in scene, vividly and honestly and in that process, all the interesting details of culture and the place you grew up, the characters, all come to life.

Paulette Alden