"Don't Be Afraid To Be Amazing."
In an interview, Irwin described a late night conversation at a Waffle House that he had with Cyndi Craven (a friend, musician and Irwin's website designer):
. . . and I was talking about what I have to tell myself all the time when I'm afraid about doing something that hasn't been done before because it really is frightening to step out and do something different. So I will tell myself, "Don’t be afraid to be amazing". Cyndi said, "Where did you get that?" I said, "I made it up".
Craven subsequently posted the quotation on the internet and it now appears on dozens of websites including the quotation search-tools Think Exist and Famous Quotes plus various other websites such as the social networking website Gaia Community, the New Age site Beyond the Rainbow and numerous personal websites.
Irwin's quotation was chosen to be the message of the murals created by artist Susan Guevara for the post-Katrina renovation of the New Orleans Children’s Resource Center branch library. Irwin also uses the quotation as a title of a storytelling workshop that he teaches to adults.
Read more about this topic: Andy Offutt Irwin
Famous quotes containing the words afraid and/or amazing:
“Holly Golightly: You know those days when you’ve got the mean reds?
Paul: The mean reds? You mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No, the blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of.”
—George Axelrod (b. 1922)
“The site of the true bottomless financial pit is the toy store. It’s amazing how much a few pieces of plastic and paper will sell for if the purchasers are parents or grandparent, especially when the manufacturers claim their product improves a child’s intellectual or physical development.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)