Real mystery - the very reason to read (and certainly write) any book - was to them a thing to dismantle, distill and mine out into rubble they could tyrannize into sorry but more permanent explanations; monuments to themselves, in other words. In my...
She said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth." "Um, okay. So what is it?" "Suffering," she said. "Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you...
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, an...
NOTHING MAKES SENSE. Do not look for any sense in things. It is not there. It is you who ascribe it to what you live or get to know. A defeat or a victory is neither a message from the gods nor a trick of fate. Neither means anything — and, if they...
Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. If all the complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been. Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it ...
A Short Testament Whatever harm I may have done In all my life in all your wide creation If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it, And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the old Whom I have roughly dismissed As if I w...
Idolatry involves putting the things we love in the place of God or seeing God as a means of getting the things that we want, and that's the second great struggle of our lives.
They learned to live contently with small things, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy not respectable, and to be rich not wealthy. They let the sacred and unconscious bloom amidst the common, renderin...
There are things that make no sense, that seem unreal, that can’t be grasped or understood or explained, that maybe don’t even exist… And still, somehow, those wonderful things touch and change our lives. Isn’t it strange?
The wave is the signature of every experience of life. By understanding the nature of waves and their characteristics, and applying that understanding to our lives, we can navigate life with a little more grace.
The human face shines as it speaks of things Near itself, thoughts full of dreams. The human face shines like a dark sky As it speaks of those things that oppress the living
Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone's horizon sweeps someone else's. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we noti...
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
If economies collapse and lawlessness rules and resources are scarce, many people who claim with their mouths that they follow Jesus... will abandon him with their lives.
Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.
- Then… it was like… I don’t even know how to describe it. Color and light and music and life and joy and love… so many wonderful things, all the lovely things that make up the world and make it worth living.
People and birds were alike. Things happened that hurt them or made their lives harder. All the time. But losing someone or something important didn't mean the end of everything. It meant you had to find a new way to do things.
The audacity is in the living, not in the choosing. You are fearless enough to keep breathing; in the face of loss and pain and humility and gratitude and gifts and brilliance and confusion. This is the amazing thing. Right or wrong can never be anyt...
One of the most important things to me is to make things real, not have models who are perfectly groomed or clothes that are too perfect. It all has to have a twist because that's how people live.
I am so much happier when I am doing the things that make me me, and that's living by my standards and doing the things I love, using my talents, however random they are, to share with other people. That's what makes me happy.
Even if they try to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that there are some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for. And if a person has not found something to die for, that person isn't fit to live!
