If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them. When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or fight like hell. – Lance Armstrong

Cancer is a word, not a sentence. – John Diamond

My cancer scare changed my life. I’m grateful for every new, healthy day I have. It has helped me prioritize my life. – Olivia Newton-John

What cancer does is, it forces you to focus, to prioritize, and you learn what’s important. I mean, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I used to get angry at cab drivers. It’s not worth it…. And when somebody says you have cancer, you realize it’s all small stuff. And if it weren’t for the downside, everyone would want to have it. But there is a downside. – Joel Siegel

During chemo, you’re more tired than you’ve ever been. It’s like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you’re out. But you also find that you’re stronger than you’ve ever been. You’re clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it’s instantaneous. – Melissa Bank

Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death. – Author Unknown

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. – Winston Churchill

The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it. – C.C. Scott

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains. – Anne Frank

Never, never, never give up. – Winston Churchill

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. – Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. – Abraham Lincoln

Once you choose hope, anything’s possible. – Christopher Reeve

Oh, my friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts – it’s what you do with what you have left. – Hubert Humphrey

Some see a hopeless end, while others see an endless hope. – Author Unknown

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. – Herm Albright

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. – Anthony J. D’Angelo

The only disability in life is a bad attitude. – Scott Hamilton

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. – Robert Brault

Anywhere is paradise; it’s up to you. – Author Unknown

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails. – Author Unknown

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. – Hugh Downs

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind. – John Burroughs

It isn’t our position but our disposition which makes us happy. – Author Unknown

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. – Maori Proverb

He who fears something gives it power over him. – Moorish Proverb

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. – Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow. – Dan Rather

In time of test, family is best. – Burmese Proverb

This week.MyRelation…Mark Twain.

…great books are weighed and measured by their style and matter and not by the trimmings and shadings of their grammer.
– Mark Twain, a Biography

When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
– The Prince and the Pauper

U.S. stamps commemorating American literature

Photo courtesy of Dave Thomson
Classic–a book which people praise and don’t read.
– Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar

You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination.
– “A Fable”

The index of a book should always be written by the author, even though the book itself should be the work of another hand.
– attributed by Robert Underwood Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it.
– Letter to Henry H. Rogers, 26 – 28 April 1897

I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
– Letter to Fred J. Hall, 10 Aug 1892

We write frankly and fearlessly but then we “modify” before we print.
– Life on the Mississippi

It is no use to keep private information which you can’t show off.
– “An Author’s Soldiering,” 1887

Experience of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted; one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.
– letter to Bruce Weston Munro, 21 Oct 1881 (Karanovich collection)

From St. Nicholas Magazine, August 1916.
From the Dave Thomson
collection

Well, my book is written–let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn’t be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can’t ever be said. And besides, they would require a library–and a pen warmed up in hell.
– Letter to W. D. Howells, 22 Sept 1889 (referring to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court)

I wrote the rest of The Innocents Abroad in sixty days and I could have added a fortnight’s labor with the pen and gotten along without the letters altogether. I was very young in those days, exceedingly young, marvelously young, younger than I am now, younger than I shall ever be again, by hundreds of years. I worked every night from eleven or twelve until broad daylight in the morning, and as I did 200,000 words in the sixty days, the average was more than 3,000 words a day- nothing for Sir Walter Scott, nothing for Louis Stevenson, nothing for plenty of other people, but quite handsome for me. In 1897, when we were living in Tedworth Square, London, and I was writing the book called Following the Equator, my average was 1,800 words a day; here in Florence (1904) my average seems to be 1,400 words per sitting of four or five hours.
– Autobiography of Mark Twain

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
– Letter to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.
– Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
– Letter to Emeline Beach, 10 Feb 1868

Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style.
– Letter to George Bainton, 15 Oct 1888; (first printed in The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners, Personally Contributed by Leading Authors of the Day. Compiled and Edited by George Bainton. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1890, pp. 85-88.)

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.
– Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880