Douglas Florian famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Left right left right. We're army ants. We swarm we fight. We have no home. We roam. We race. You're lucky if we miss your place.
-- Douglas Florian

#Home #Army #Fighting
The art has to have a life of its own and not merely illustrate. I've always felt a great illustration can make a good poem even better. That's the advantage I have in illustrating my own work - I have the freedom to leap far from the poem.
-- Douglas Florian

#Art #Leap
With time some poems just fall by the wayside. Other poems get better over time with revision, revision, revision. My ladybug poem took 10 minutes to write but was 10 years in the making.
-- Douglas Florian

#Fall #Writing #Get Better
When I was young I drew constantly in my sketchbooks to learn to see things. My first teacher in school, Gilbert Stone, taught me that you have to see things as they are first. Then you can distort, exaggerate, or re-create the world. I sketch in a small, unobtrusive sketchbook or on any paper at hand. I write on canary yellow tablets or any scrap available. I'm constantly doodling, even while editing my kids' homework, much to their chagrin!
-- Douglas Florian

#Teacher #School #Writing
I studied art at Queens College, taking very few courses in literature. But I've always loved reading poetry and grew up enjoying the so-called beat poets, Allan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso among them. The poems of Ogden Nash also inspired me, having first seen his work while browsing in a library when I was in the sixth grade.
-- Douglas Florian

#Art #Reading #College
Narrative nonfiction was not my forte. I always wanted to let my imagination run free, and the facts sometimes got in the way. At one point I wanted to illustrate Jack Prelutsky's enchanting poems. Unable to do that, I started devising and improvising my own poems, very raw at first. I immersed myself in verse, writing reams of stuff until it gelled.
-- Douglas Florian

#Running #Writing #Imagination

Unless I am sure I am doing more at home to send the gospel abroad than I can do abroad, I am bound to go.
Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair, and left my necktie God knows where. And carried half way home, or near, pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.
One symptom of his (Hitler) being strangely at variance with reality, or the nature of things,was his gift for wearing inappropriate of ludicrous clothing...When he was supposed to be starting a militaristic revolution he was wearing evening dress and an ill-fitting black tailcoat...and his army medals.
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not...the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army...our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms....
Tell you what, if there were gays in the army 'Saving Private Ryan' would have been a hell of a lot shorter film. There is no way it would take gay men three hours to find Matt Damon.
It won't be a question of how well-trained or well-equipped the army is but one of the authority it serves.
It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.
So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.
"We will coordinate efforts of the PLO with responsible authorities in Jordan in all fields - politically, militarily and materially..." "It was very probable that the Jordan army might start the battle."

Douglas Florian famous quotes

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