Quotes from Sena Jeter Naslund

That's the way it is in life. You let go of what is beautiful and unique. You pursue something new and don't even know that the wind of your own running is a thief.

S IS THE SOUND of the sea. Her surge and suck, her spray and surf. Sometimes she seethes. She knows the sound of smooth. With her s, the sea marries the shore, and then there is scamper and slush in the sand. With curling s's the sea rises to stroke the side of her superior, the sky, who loves and meets her in the s of spray, spawned in liquid and air.

Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost.

Debería tener la capacidad de ser feliz conmigo misma, de estar satisfecha con lo que soy. No como reina, sino con lo que soy.

I spiraled slowly down the steps, the soft way a milkweed seed sometimes twirls to earth. I wanted time for any vague thought to come to mind that mind should want. No new ones came, but the pace seemed a meditative winding, and what I was winding was like yarn on an oblong skein, softly enfolding a quiet center that was myself.

It was in her nature to love and to nurture; she would not leave those feelings within herself to fester and sour, but instead she chose someone who would receive her gifts gladly. She did not hold herself to be so special that only one special person could she find satisfactory.

Al día de hoy, al comprender la habilidad del mundo para presionarme hasta que haga lo que no hago, he madurado. Con qué actitud desempeño mi papel, eso depende únicamente de mi.

Rousseau pensaba que era bueno estar solo a veces y que quizá nuestras naturalezas florecían con la máxima pureza en esas ocasiones.

La lectura, asegura, ampliaría mi experiencia del mundo. Las ideas que se encuentran en los libros serios darían profundidad a mis pensamientos sobre cada decisión que tomo.

Reading, he claims, would broaden my experience of the world. The ideas to be found in serious books would deepen my thinking about every choice I make.

Yet intact Ahab, back from his first voyage, once said of just such a changeable breeze, This contrast is the way of life itself. All playfully, he added, But were I God, then would every day be invariantly good. Then he asked me if he might be the god of my world.

Beware the treachery of words... Words seem to be well-woven baskets ready to hold your meaning, but they betray you with rotted corners and splintered stays.

It seemed to me that the two remaining masts almost leaned forward, out of the vertical, so great was the pressure of wind in sails. Nothing broke, nothing tore—so beautiful was our position and so constant the current of air. It made the blood sing in my veins, and I knew I could be a sailor for life, if I chose. Yes, I could gladly wait a lifetime, a full sixteen years more, for such a sensation again. Without our effort, grace moved us forward.

But I do not think dragons drained such sad blood.

She was not spouting, but sewing the water with her body

I told her that I was a University of One, Una University, and that all day she should listen to me talk.... But when I began to expatiate, it amazed me how little I knew, and that, really, it did not require the day, but only the morning to get through it all.

As a girl rebelling against my father's dogma, I had scoffed at Job for accepting God's consolation of a new wife and new children. But I, most Joblike, when Giles was dead, embraced Kit, and when Kit conveyed that he was not coming back, it was the messenger himself, Ahab, whom I immediately loved. If Mother and Liberty were gone, then here was Susan to unburden me of love. Not to be loved but to love lightened my load of grief and gave value and direction to my life.

I rather regretted that I did not myself have a sister who was a friend and with whom I could compare myself, the better to understand both my singularity and our commonality.

Beware the treachery of words, Mrs Sparrow. They mean one thing to one person and the opposite to another.

Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.

Perhaps Vulnerability was a land that, for some people, could never be entirely traversed.

Quizá mi vida no es más que una serie de momentos de vestirse y desvestirse de nuevo para la tarea en cuestión.

Cómo puede uno comer cuando el corazón está ocupado?

What do you think of God," I asked, "for testing the loyalty of Job?" "I think it is wrong for the strong to test the weak, though it is natural for the weak to test the strong.