Quote collection
647 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"What if we never 'get over' certain deaths, or our childhoods? What if the idea that we should have by now, or will, is a great palace lie? What if we're not supposed to? What if it takes a life time...?"
"I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me."
"My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable"
"When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you."
"Certainty is missing the point entirely."
"Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right."
"And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore."
"It's a great time to be alive."
"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship"
"Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe."
"I think Jesus is divine love manifest on Earth, as it comes through the community of Christians."
"I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that's what Jesus said to do."
"Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly."
"My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean."
"Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."
"Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air."
"I don't want something special. I want something beautifully plain."
"...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much."
"Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a lot of gaping wounds and dazed expressions. Or, as Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an orphan's home." And this feels more true than almost anything else I know. But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, read one line, and said, "Yes!" And I want to give people that feeling, too, of connection, communication."
"Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)"