Opening Quotes (page 83)
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It does not matter what it is; it matters how much there is of it; that all around the oases of your shining Western cities it exists; it is three-fourths of the world! Open your ears, my darling; listen to thier prayers; listen to the silence of those who've learned to pray for nothing. For nothing has always been their portion, whatever the name of their nation, thier city, their tribe.
Anne Rice
The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner’s humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step . . . .
Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.
Julia Cameron
How can she who had torn his heart open at the waterworks with her art lie now like a human in his arms? Or stand catatonic in front of bananas on Eastern Avenue deciding which bunch to buy? Does this make her more magical? As if a fabulous heron in flight has fallen dead at his feet and he sees the further wonder of its meticulous construction. How did someone conceive of putting this structure of bones and feathers together, deciding on the weight of beak and skull, and give it the...
Michael Ondaatje
Our days flowed around well-charted, often traveled courses, and yet, the underlying sense of falling out of time, out of the trajectory of one's life, not by choice, but by subtraction, was frequent and disquieting. Then I grieved for him, for the lost and previous Paul. He grieved for that man too. Both our griefs were mainly private, internal, unuttered. Return was impossible, and there was only one direction open ; and so we kept our compass pointed forward. [p. 286]
Diane Ackerman
And once Father Lucas said to me, 'Be simple, Matthew, life is a simple book, and an open book, read and be simple as the beasts in the field; just being miserable isn't enough -- you've got to know how.' So I got to thinking and I said to myself, 'This is a terrible thing that Father Lucas has put on me -- be simple like the beasts and yet think and harm nobody.
Djuna Barnes
But tomorrow I'll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I'm back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Head down, without a word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am...
Haruki Murakami
The Panther
His gaze is from the passing of bars
so exhausted, that it doesn't hold a thing anymore.
For him, it's as if there were thousands of bars
and behind the thousands of bars no world.
The sure stride of lithe, powerful steps,
that around the smallest of circles turns,
is like a dance of pure energy about a center,
in which a great will stands numbed.
Only occasionally, without a sound, do the covers
of the eyes slide open—. An image rushes in,
goes through the tensed silence of...
Rainer Maria Rilke
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.
Herman Melville