"If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup. " -- Turkish proverb

It's the birthday of novelist and poet Rosellen Brown, born in Philadelphia (1939). Her novels include Tender Mercies, Before and After, and Half a Heart.

Her family moved around a lot when she was a child, and Brown began reading Turgenev and Dostoevsky. She said, "I was nine when words began to serve their extraordinary purposes for me. I was lonely and they kept me company. They materialized whenever I called on them without an argument or a competitive leer."

She said, "I still write for the same reason I wrote when I was nine years old, to speak more perfectly than I really can to a listener more perfect than any I know."

Here's some useful Buddhist wisdom:

"We should not merely expend all our energy collecting pieces of information, but make an effort to experience their validity through insight in our daily life."

-Geshe Rabten, in Advice From a Spiritual Friend

Poet Charles Simic said, "Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. We are always at the beginning, eternal apprentices."

Scottish philosopher David Hume said, "Reading and sauntering and lounging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness."