The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists ourselves...The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes.
The power we discover inside ourselves as we survive a life-threatening experience can be utilized equally well outside of crisis, too. I am, in every moment, capable of mustering the strength to survive again—or of tapping that strength in other g...
Brother, I’m not depressed and haven’t lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortune...
When we worry about someone we send them a secret message – I don’t believe in you. When we worry about our life, we send ourselves a secret message – I don’t believe in me.
We can retreat and retreat and let ourselves get backed into corners forever,” she’d said once. “Or we can go out and meet the enemy at the time and place we choose. Not them.” Okay, Tasha, I thought. Let’s see if your advice gets me killed...
I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.
I believe that we are given strength and help from a power much larger than ourselves. I believe if I humble myself that this power will come through me, and help me create work that is bigger than I would have ever been able to have done alone.
Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors... Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat... What then was music created for? Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voic...
Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our souls, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness ...
I've heard it said that technology makes a good person better, and it makes a bad person worse. That's okay with me. I say we keep building new versions of ourselves, keep exploring the unknown, and keep growing. We're gonna be fine. Different, but f...
Wait here, Miz Meg, and we'll holler when we're undressed and under the covers. We know it don't bother you seein' our backsides since you're a widow and all, but it'd sure bother us… even though you've seen "em before. We kinda like to keep 'em to...
We are rational creatures, Professor Jove explained; hope is irrational. We thus set ourselves up for one dispiriting fall after the next. Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to th...
The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.
Love is a beautiful, wonderful, and even sacred thing, but until it arrives, shouldn’t we give ourselves permission to thrive?
Few celebrate a dog who jumps at people as they approach--but start with the premise that it is we who keep ourselves (and our faces) unbearably far away, and we can come to a mutual understanding.
Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obli...
The only magic that's left in the world right now is the magic that we make ourselves, deliberately. You're not going to stumble over enchantment by chance. You have to be open to it, looking for it, and when you first think you might have glimpsed i...
Let us leave political questions to be decided by the powers concerned," Sir Ralph would say, "as we have adopted a form of government which forbids us to discuss our interests ourselves. If a nation is responsible for the faults of its legislature, ...
We all have a central fiction about ourselves, a favored delusion about talent or untapped potential. Most of us hang on to it as if it were a lifesaver, even though the obsession with it is often the very thing that drags us down and prevents us fro...
I said, "Where's all that delivering God's supposed to do?" He snorted. "You're right, the only deliverance is the one we get for ourselves. The Lord doesn't have any hands and feet but ours." "That doesn't say much for the Lord." "It doesn't say muc...
I like this dirty Chase, this crude and irreverent man. I want to go where he's taking me. I need to be dragged down to where he is so we can build ourselves back up, together, stronger.
