Quotes
Lines That Stayed
Borrowed from writers I return to. Sentences that wouldn't let me forget them.
09
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
— Simone WeilFirst and Last Notebooks
On the spiritual dimension of genuine attention.
Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel.
— Virginia WoolfModern Fiction
On the nature of consciousness and the task of literature.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
— Jorge Luis BorgesPoems of the Night
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
— Albert CamusReturn to Tipasa
On resilience and the endurance of the inner life.
We are all just walking each other home.
— Ram Dass
On the nature of human companionship and shared mortality.
I am not resigned: I am not afraid. I do not even bother to be brave.
— Sylvia PlathThe Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
— James BaldwinAs Much Truth As One Can Bear
On the relationship between awareness and transformation.
Writing is the unknown. Before writing, we know nothing of what we will write. In all its fullness.
— Marguerite DurasWriting
On writing as discovery rather than expression.
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
— Vladimir NabokovSpeak, Memory
Opening lines — on memory, time, and the mystery of consciousness.