#55

It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay.

100 Years of Solitude

#54

Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me?

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

#53

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

More Words

My Words

#52

#51

About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.

The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

#50

Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

#49

From Sherman Alexie's article written recently on why it's okay for YA Lit to be brutally honest. He is the author of the YA Novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, based on his childhood growing up on a reservation.

"When I think of the poverty-stricken, sexually and physically abused, self-loathing Native American teenager that I was, I can only wish, immodestly, that I’d been given the opportunity to read “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Or Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak.” Or Chris Lynch’s “Inexusable.” Or any of the books that Ms. Gurdon believes to be irredeemable. I can’t speak for other writers, but I think I wrote my YA novel as a way of speaking to my younger, irredeemable self. Of course, all during my childhood, would-be saviors tried to rescue my fellow tribal members. They wanted to rescue me. But, even then, I could only laugh at their platitudes. In those days, the cultural conservatives thought that KISS and Black Sabbath were going to impede my moral development. They wanted to protect me from sex when I had already been raped. They wanted to protect me from evil though a future serial killer had already abused me. They wanted me to profess my love for God without considering that I was the child and grandchild of men and women who’d been sexually and physically abused by generations of clergy.

What was my immature, childish response to those would-be saviors?

“Wow, you are way, way too late.”

....

And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters."

#48

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.”

Alan Keightley

#47

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature- but that is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

#46

#45

I knew that no one comes holier than anyone else, that nowhere is better than anywhere else. I knew that the resurrection of the mind was possible. I knew that no matter how absurd and ironic it was, acknowledging death and the finite was what gave you life and presence. You might as well make it good. Nature, family, children, cadavers, birth, rivers in which we pee and bathe, splash and flirt and float memorial candles- in these you would find holiness.

Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith

#44

There is now, living in New York City, a church-sanctioned hermit, Theresa Mancuso, who wrote recently, "The thing we desperately need is to face the way it is."

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

#43

I finally figured out that I had a choice: I could suffer a great deal, or not, or for a long time. Or I could have the combo platter: suffer, breathe, pray, play, cry, and try to help people. There was a meaning in pain; it taught you how to survive with a modicum of grace when you did not get what you wanted.

Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually)

#42

A long time ago I read Jack Kerouac's essential for prose. Four of them, in particular, have provided me with heart for the path:

Accept loss forever

Be submissive to everything, open, listening

No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge

Be in love with your life

Believe me, you, too, can find yourself inside the huge terrain of writing. No one is so odd as to be left out.

Now, please, go. Write your asses off.

-Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

#41

Make a line, write a sentence. See what happens.

-George Crane

#40

"Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it's social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die."

- Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

#39

#38

The legend of the traveler appears in every civilization, perpetually assuming new forms, afflictions, powers, and symbols. Through every age he walks in utter solitude toward penance and redemption.

-Evan S. Connell Jr. Notes form a Bottle

#37

"I maintain control of my soul 'cause i know it gets greater later"

#36

They tell me that, I'm not qualified,

To lend my voice, to something so beautiful.

We only get to live one time, but twice did my life stand in some sunshine.
I could lose eyesight, I could end up blind.
But I drew my design inside the bloodline.
Years go by, memories combine.
But y'all the only reason I would even rewind.
Thank you for the branch you grew on this tree.
Your first breath wasn't easy to find.
So you signified the mountain you climbed, By lettin' out a warriors cry and it sounded like mine.

Now everybody hold up the family sign.

"Something So", Atmosphere

#35

"We show up, burn brightly, live passionately, hold nothing back, and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go."

- Rolf Gates

#34

Art is far more important than we realize at first blush,

as important as food.

It is another way of altering consciousness.

It alters the way we look at the world.

If we are going to be saved as a species I think art will be the primary factor.

George Crane

#33

In addition to the knowledge of history, we need the understanding of art. Stories identify, unify, give meaning to. Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.

Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

#32

I can therefor I am, and sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will always teach you.

-Shihan

#31

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love

#30

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

-Mark Twain

#29

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Miriam Beard

#28

With the Oscars coming up I am posting my favorite acceptance speech. Sandra Bullock is the epitome of grace after winning her first Oscar in 2010. I thought it would be more effective to listen to, than to read, enjoy!

#27

#26

Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don't want.
-Abraham

#25

"None of us exist in a vacuum. Everything about us, where we live and how we live, is inextricably linked to how our forebears lived. Connected to our ancestors via distinct forms, patterns, rhythms and shapes, we belong to societies that are in a continuing balancing act between forging forward and looking back. We cannot escape history and tradition."

Herbert Ypma, Paris Flea Market

#24

"There is a reason we are here and that reason is to remain graceful and face all ungraceful environments with grace. This is the purpose and it is a privilege."

Yogi Bhajan

#23

“The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse.”

Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge p. 21

#22

“Well, words are powerful beyond our knowledge, certainly. And they are beautiful. Words are intrinsically powerful, I believe. And there is magic in that. Words come from nothing into being. They are created in the imagination and given life on the human voice.”

N. Scott Momaday, interviewed in Creators on Creating

#21

“I have known five of my great grandparents intimately. They tutored me in stories with a belief that the lineage mattered. Genealogy is in our blood. As a people and as a family, we have a sense of history. And our history is tied to land…Our attachment to the land was our attachment to each other.”

Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge