Quotes from M.J. Rose

you have all the hallmarks of a seeker...You chase special knowledge. You find threads of connections and then share them with people who need them. I can read it in the way you looked at me, the questions you ask, but more importantly, the ones you don't.

We see what we want to see when we look at someone. Like a diamond before it has been cut. We can guess at its brilliance but can't see the faults until the stone has been cut and polished. Only then can we glimpse inside and see the occlusions and the clarity. 

All you have to do is open yourself up to the cosmos as it lays itself before you. See it in all its mysterious dimensions. Without prejudice. Without assumption... All you ever needed was the key to open yourself to it. And that key is the wonder of the world. All the songs you could never remember but couldn't forget? You can find them now.

I wouldn't think it happens easily or often, never for some people. I imagine a love like that is like a fire starting with a spark and growing into a blaze becoming an engulfing passion too hot for most people to withstand.

They called it the Great War, but that implied worthiness and grandeur, not violence and helplessness and the utter waste and devastation our country, our city, our people endured.

Sometimes love worked out, but more often it failed

The secret, which is not so secret after all, is that the people who we love live on in our hearts, in the beat of our blood.

There was, for many of us, a great escape in reading about the fantastic and supernatural during wartime. Terrors more terrible than those we were living through gave us an outlet for our anxiety.

Art frees us from our prejudices and gives us the chance to become our best selves, individuals who dare to dream. And even if those dreams aren't always as pretty as we'd like, or don't conform, or frighten us, it is our duty to encourage art to flourish. All art. Every kind.

The library at home when she was child had been her refuge. She gravitated to it. When she was anxious, just taking a book of a shelf calmed her. Opening the cover, feeling the paper's smoothness, smelling the sheets, the leather, even sometimes the ink, centered her.

Every culture has its version. It's universal. One of the things that is most fascinating about studying mythology is how so many of the stories and symbols are the same through the centuries and cultures. Just renamed and slightly altered.

But it's been a wonderful change. I've found myself. I am stronger than I have ever been. I am painting, and I'm good at it. I have goals and desires. That's a positive change. Not something to be afraid of.

One man's ugliness can blind another to the world's magic.

Look at that magic. Light mattered to Monet, to Cezanne, to Manet, and now Matisse is moving into almost flat color, and everyone is following. And Picasso? He doesn't care about light at all. But you can't have beauty without light, and beauty is the only worthwhile quest. Don't lose your way trying to become popular.

The lines change. Did you know that? Destiny is not fixed. It's a probable path, but life alters it. Otherwise, how boring life would be, non?

The soul can recall what the mind forgets.

One of the great mysteries," he said, running his finger down my cheek, "is what makes two people right for each other.

Always love to the point of madness," he said, "or else what is the point of love?

Too many people try to assuage pain that can never be eradicated. All you can do is salute the grief, acknowledge that you carry it, too, and that even though we all travel that path alone, we are not alone in traveling it.

before there was a death there had been a life, and before that life a death and that there would be a life after this death too. The circles would continue on without end and everyone who was once connected would be connected again.

I felt his voice. Fingers rubbing moss. Smoke curling. Wood worn and smoothed over time. His voice had darkness in it that hovered close to the ground, like a mist hanging over a lake deep in a forest at dusk. A bolt of sea-green velvet. A sensation as much as a series of sounds. It reverberated inside me.

To be a decent writer you must have both empathy and imagination. While these attributes aid your art, they can plague your soul. You don't simply suffer your own sadness, experience your own longing and worry about your own wife and children, you are burdened with experiencing the emotional states of multitudes of others you don't know.

E)very soul requires secret places for contemplation as well as open spaces for celebration.

It was a fitting animal for a priest. Cats guard the secrets of the otherworld and are liaisons with mystic realms. Protectors of esoteric knowledge, cats can open the gates through which a priest can see the future and gain insight.