Quotes from the book Dance first. Think later.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
— Kurt Vonnegut (Writer)

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
— Ian Maclaren (Writer)

If you wish to be a writer, write.
— Epictetus (Greek philosopher)

Never tell people how you are. They don't want to know.
— Johann Wolfgang, Von Goethe (Writer)

Don't be humble. You're not that great.
— Golda Meir (Stateswoman)

If everything is under control, you are going too slow.
— Mario Andretti (Race car driver)

Don't expect to be popular. The better you do the job, the more likely you are to go against conventional wisdom, and people don't like to hear bad news. So, you are not going to be popular.
— David Halberstam (Journalist)

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (Roman philosopher/ Statesman)

Whenever you have a little bit of time for yourself, read a book. Always carry something with characters written on it with you and look at it when no one's looking.
— Hojo Soun (Samurai)

Always, in all circumstances, wear comfortable shoes. You never know when you may have to run for your life.
— Callie Khouri (Screenwriter/Director)

If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough.
— Alan Curtis Kay (Computer scientist)

You never want to give a man a present when you know he's feeling good. You want to do it when he's down.
— Lyndon B. Johnson (Statesman)

It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.
— George Orwell (Writer)

Don't ever ask anyone for an opinion of your performance. They're liable to tell you.
— Jerry Stiller (Comedian)

Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
— Colette (Writer)

Never pay any attention to what critics say. Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!
— Jean Sibelius (Composer)

Be warned against all "good" advice because "good" advice is necessarily "safe" advice, and though it will undoubtedly follow a sane pattern, it will very likely lead one into total sterility — one of the crushing problems of our time.
— Jules Feiffer (Cartoonist)

Learn to draw. Or to play the cello. Or to tap dance. Something impractical, even useless. Whatever it is, it ought to be hard for you, something you haven't really got time for, and that by professional standards you probably won't ever do well.
— John Walsh (Art historian)

If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.
— Kinky Friedman (Singer/Writer)

Take no advice, including this.
— Carl Sandburg (Writer)

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
— Mark Twain (Writer)

You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it.
— Jimmy Dean (Sausage mogul/Country singer)

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
— George S. Patton (General)

Back up your hard drive. What do I mean by that? Although your life may be cruising along smoothly, I recommend that every once in a while you stop and envision a sudden shipwreck occurring. Then think, re-think and remember what you would really want to hold on to if disaster should strike.
— Larry Bock (Venture capitalist)

Work honestly and build, build, build. That's all I can tell you.
— J.R. Simplot (Agribusiness magnate/Billionaire)

Work seriously and steadily. I don't even think geniuses can get good right away.
— Tanaka Yukio (Musician)

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
— Eric Hoffer (Longshoreman/Philosopher)

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.
— Linus Torvalds (Software engineer/ Founder of Linux)

If you're about to get into a fight, and you know for sure you're going to fight, make sure you punch first.
— Vincent Lecavalier (Hockey player)

Save yourself several thousand dollars and start flossing like a maniac now.
— Callie Khouri (Screenwriter/ Director)

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor, read as one goes in; read as one goes out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (Roman philosopher/ Statesman)

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.
— Linus Pauling (Chemist)

Always avoid meetings with time-wasting morons.
— Scott Adams (Cartoonist)

Invest at least as much time and effort in choosing a new stock as you would in choosing a new refrigerator.
— Peter Lynch (Investor)

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.
— Oprah Winfrey (Media magnate)

This is very important — to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything. Whether you're an actor, anything, a housewife… there has to be great pauses between highs, where you do nothing at all. You just lay on a bed and stare at the ceiling. This is very important… just to do nothing at all, very, very important.
— Charles Bukowski (Writer)

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.
— Katharine Hepburn (Actress)

Never explain — your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
— Elbert G. Hubbard (Writer)

You need to be absolutely paranoid about the currency of your knowledge and ask yourself every day: Am I really up to speed? Or am I stagnating intellectually, faking it or even worse, falling behind? Am I still learning? Or am I just doing the same stuff on a different day? Or as Otis Redding sings, "Sitting on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away."
— David L. Calhoun (Businessman)

Three of the four most important lessons I ever learned in life came from my stepdad and Aunt Jen:

1. The only person you can count on in life is yourself.

2. You can't be happy with someone else until you're happy with yourself.

3. Don't lie and don't break your word.

4. If you're interested in a girl, always meet her mom because all girls end up eventually turning into their moms, with no exceptions.

— Bill Simmons (Sportswriter)

If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.
— Charles F. Kettering (Engineer/Inventor)

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
— William Blake (Poet)

If your desk isn't covered, you probably aren't doing your job.
— Harold S. Geneen (Businessman)

If you wish to win a man's heart, allow him to confute you.
— Benjamin Disraeli (Statesman)

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
— Indira Gandhi (Stateswoman)

When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
— Epictetus (Greek philosoper)

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
— David Ogilvy (Advertising executive)

The four most expensive words in the English language are "this time it's different."
— John Templeton (Investor)