Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"'what will people think' has killed more dreams than failure ever will." -- Shannan Monson (ShannanMonson), 2019-12-02

After adding that to the quotes queue, I found this to pair with it, from John Ezard's interview of Ray Bradbury in 1990:

Sixty one years ago, when he was nine years old, Ray Bradbury stopped clipping out the daily Buck Rogers space strip from the Waukegan News-Sun. The decision was to be the turning-point of his life.

He was mad about the strip. But his friends in fourth grade made fun of him. Buck Rogers wasn't important, the future wasn't going to happen. So he tore up his entire collection.

One morning about two weeks later he woke up crying. "I asked myself: 'Why am I crying, who died?' The answer was me. I asked: 'Why am I dying, what am I dying of?' The answer that came was that I was dying because I had destroyed the future because I had listened to those fools.

"Then I said: 'Well, what's the solution, how can I not die?' And the answer was, go back and collect comic strips and Buck Rogers and make your life whole. So I went back and started collecting again. All of a sudden all of my life came back, all of my love.

"And then I made up my mind that I would never listen to another damn fool ever in my life. That was the day I learned that I was right and everybody else was wrong. If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it."

[Happy Gregorian New Year! May it be better than last year, for each of us!]

Today is
Gregorian: 2020 January 01 -- eighth day of Christmas, tenth day of Yule
(also New Year 2563 B.E. in Thailand)
Julian: 2019 December 19
Hebrew: 5780 Teveth 04
Islamic: 1441 Jumada I-Ula 05
Persian: 1398 Dey 11
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.7.2.7
Indian: 1941 Pausa 11
Coptic: 1736 Pef 22