Words to Write By

I'm taking a writing class and the instructor likes to post inspirational quotes for us to read. My friend Jack used to do this when he taught writing classes. He would get to class early and write something on the board. I loved those quotes, but I never understood why he used them. I didn't really think that the students cared about them.

Now I'm clinging to these quotes. 

One recent one came from poet Nikki Giovanni:

"Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don't. ...If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."

And yet I like this statement of hers even better:

"A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without a guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die."