Quotes

Levertov / Dust

A Gift --- Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to…Read more Levertov / Dust

On Greek Spirit, Hegel

The Greek Spirit: For the Greeks only *watch* the objects of Nature, and form *surmises* respecting them; inquiring, in the depths of their souls, for the hidden meaning. According to Aristotle's dictum, that Philosophy proceeds from Wonder, the Greek view of Nature also proceeds from wonder of this kind. Not that in their experience, Spirit…Read more On Greek Spirit, Hegel

Vincent

There are so many people, especially among our comrades, who imagine that words are nothing – on the contrary, isn't it true that saying a thing well is as interesting and as difficult as painting it? (Vincent van Gogh) Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion. (Vincent van Gogh)…Read more Vincent

‘If the Furies Should Take…’

'It is widely rumored, and also true, that I wrote my first novel in a closet. Before I get all rapturous and carried away here, I had better admit to that. The house was tiny, I was up late at night typing while another person slept, and there just wasn't any other place for me…Read more ‘If the Furies Should Take…’

Thoreau on the (Hu)man

"See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all day he fears, not being immortal or divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. . . Think, also, of the ladies of…Read more Thoreau on the (Hu)man

Truest Confidant

“I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal; my pen is my truest confidant, holding in check the passions and disappointments that I dare not share even with my beloved.” ~ Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at…Read more Truest Confidant

A New Proposition

-- "Faith is not being sure. It is not being sure, but betting with your last cent... Faith is not a series of gilt-edged propositions that you sit down to figure out, and if you follow all the logic and accept all the conclusions, then you have it. It is crumpling and throwing away everything,…Read more A New Proposition

Everything Unresolved

-- "...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given…Read more Everything Unresolved