Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
Charlotte: I tried taking pictures, but they were so mediocre. I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses... taking pictures of your feet.
[last lines] [Salieri is wheelchaired through the insane asylum] Antonio Salieri: Mediocrities everywhere... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you all.
That’s the problem with fiction — or the charm, if you want. Even mediocre plots have a way of sinking their hooks into you, until you find yourself concerned for the fates of characters who aren’t even fully convincing.
Let your first enemy be mediocrity; it has no role to play, no word to say and no action to display in your life. Never love to swim in shallow waters; they breed nothing than fearful reptiles of failure!
Your failure may put smiles on people’s faces while your success squeezes tears from their eyes. Don’t be deceived; it’s just a charm to entice you to fall in love with mediocrity!
The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's...
Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and never lose it but simply wield it.
It is far too easy to discover complacency in mediocrity. Success is rooted in extreme ambition, implanted by divine guidance, and is achieved long before others are able to see it. Surprise them all, but you know this…you are already there.
At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe.
Become successful, not just because you want to but because you have to! What’s the point in living a mediocre life, if the human race can learn to become successful?
Don't let a mediocre person tell you what you are capable of or how your future is going to be.
The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.
Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.
[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.
Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.
Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness...
It drives me crazy who quickly the great ones get canonized. 'Blah-blah-blah is such a terrible loss.' Does that mean that the death of one mediocre slob is not as terrible? Do fags have to be geniuses to justify living?
Comparing ourselves instead of taking lessons from ourselves is not only a catalyst to diminishing our true purpose but also a great ingredient to thinking negative and staying in mediocrity
Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.
We cannot not live out the fullness of a flourishing human life separate from and an acknowledgment of and intimacy with the Divine. Well, actually, we can. Understanding this choice necessitates an exchange of expectations. Consequently, the only re...
