Priscilla Shirer quote: “Lord, please do this… or do something better!”

“Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Hallelujah" - 1984 performance http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3rwo0_leonard-cohen-hallelujah_music · Montreal Jazz Festival 2008 performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FpwjQLZTTs
Various Positions (1984)
Context: Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

“Please don’t nag yourself with thoughts of failure. Do not set goals far beyond your capacity to achieve. Simply do what you can do, in the best way you know, and the Lord will accept of your effort.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Rise to the Stature of the Divine within You, Ensign, Nov 1989, 94.

“The only thing I knew to do was to pray. “Lord, if I’m going to be rescued,” I said out loud, “please let me know.””

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 175

“Anything was better than playing cards, and I was doing something I wanted to do — creating.”

Mary Martin (1913–1990) American actress

On becoming a dance teacher, and creating her own moves, p. 44
My Heart Belongs (1976)

“There is deliverance in store only for the man who gives up his selfishness, and whose sole aim is to please the Lord and to do what is right in his sight.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 29.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.”

Lisa See book Dreams of Joy

Source: Dreams of Joy

“I began to feel the desire for something more; I wanted to do something to make things better.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

On his ambitions as a youth, in an Academy of Achievement interview (28 October 2000) http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gor0int-1
1990s

“It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

We can quite well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper dungeons of our destiny. … Theoretic truths not only are disputable, but their whole meaning and force lie in their being disputed, they spring from discussion. They live as long as they are discussed, and they are made exclusively for discussion. But destiny — what from a vital point of view one has to be or has not to be — is not discussed, it is either accepted or rejected. If we accept it, we are genuine; if not, we are the negation, the falsification of ourselves. Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

“My point is that doing something like this takes more time that writing another shitty, predictable Lord of the Rings knockoff.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

On the progress of The Wise Man's Fear in "Concerning the Release of Book Two" (26 February 2009) http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2009/02/concerning-the-release-of-book-two/
Official site
Context: My book is different.
In case you hadn't noticed, the story I'm telling is a little different. It's a little shy on the Aristotelian unities. It doesn't follow the classic Hollywood three-act structure. It's not like a five-act Shakespearean play. It's not like a Harlequin romance.
So what *is* the structure then? Fuck if I know. That's part of what's taking me so long to figure out. As far as I can tell, my story is part autobiography, part hero's journey, part epic fantasy, part travelogue, part faerie tale, part coming of age story, part romance, part mystery, part metafictional-nested-story-frame-tale-something-or-other.
I am, quite frankly, making this up as I go. If I get it right, I get something like The Name of the Wind. Something that makes all of us happy.
But if I fuck it up, I'll end up with a confusing tangled mess of a story.
Now I'm not trying to claim that I'm unique in this. That I'm some lone pioneer mapping the uncharted storylands. Other authors do it too. My point is that doing something like this takes more time that writing another shitty, predictable Lord of the Rings knockoff.
Sometimes I think it would be nice to write a that sort of book. It would be nice to be able to use those well-established structures like a sort of recipe. A map. A paint-by-numbers kit.
It would be so much easier, and quicker. But it wouldn't be a better book. And it's not really the sort of book I want to write.

“Michael Carpenter: Lord, we walk into darkness now. Our enemies will surround us. Please help to make us strong enough to do what needs to be done. Amen.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Grave Peril (2001), Chapter 24

“Lord, please do this… or do something better!”

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