Quotes from Fenton Johnson

Wisdom begins in listening; listening begins in silence; silence is rooted in solitude.

We must teach ourselves to value flux, but more than that, we must teach ourselves to value and attend to friends, not as way-stations between lovers or diversions from the real business of pairing up and marriage, but as relationships of first consequence in their own right.

To choose to be alone is to bait the trap, to create a space the demons cannot resist entering. And that's the good news; the demons that enter can be named, written about, and tamed through the miracle of the healing word, the miracle of art, the miracle of silence.

When crises come, though friends and relatives may be generous and eager to help, in the end it is I, alone on the trail, alone in the museum, alone in the courtroom, alone in the emergency room, alone in the morgue, alone in my illness, alone in my reading, alone in my writing, alone in the silence of my heart.

For travel is a stimulus to the imagination, and imagination is the very path to love.

Never change your plans because of the weather, be Zen and go with the weather, let the weather reveal itself to you in all its variety and grandeur.

Grief is love's alter ego, after all, yin to its yang, the necessary other; like night, grief has its own dark beauty. How may we know light without knowledge of dark? How may we know love without sorrow? "The disorientation following such loss can be terrible, I know" Wendell Berry wrote me on learning of Larry's death. "But grief gives the full measure of love, and it is somehow reassuring to learn, even by suffering, how large, and powerful love is.

In a society obsessed with coupling (turn on the radio and try to find a song that's not about true love—getting it, wanting it, losing it, getting it back), the solitary acts as a contemporary court jester, telling truths about our communities that those certified by the laws of state and church are unable to perceive or unwilling to speak aloud.

How many relationships endure not from love but because one or both partners fear solitude more than they fear mayhem?

The solitary traveler occupies a place of openness that becomes a place of radical empowerment, because learning begins in letting go, becoming vulnerable, feeling awkward and stupid, losing the self to find the self.

Why don't the entertainment industry and religious institutions support more songs, books, movies praising friendship? Because friendship, unlike marriage, offers no capital to church, state, and corporation.

I have always felt to be true: that the greatest achievement in life is to work out the terms of one's own salvation, however one may define that term. "Free to make mistakes and be the master of one's own destiny,

music. To be an artist is not, finally, about product; it is about process, a way of being, and every solitary is of necessity an artist—an artist of her or his life, with little or no help from conventional rites and forms and mythologies, making it up as we go.

The suffering at such times [of bereavement] can be great, I know. But it is somehow comforting to learn, even through suffering, how large and powerful love is.

This is the magic of the word in print: not that it answers questions but that it composes an ongoing score for life, a mute chorus of voices as alive and evolving as light.

Love is like a ripe peach. You take it when and where you find it, there's no point in letting it sit around. If you're lucky to come across it, you'd better enjoy it right then and there.

This is why one becomes a monk: to cultivate in every moment presence to the beauty of the world.