Quotes from Hal Zina Bennett

in the heat of unprecedented technological breakthroughs it is easy to think that we are invincible, like gods who would rule the world. But none of us need be reminded that the future of our planet is being held hostage by our own cleverness, with nuclear physics, chemistry, agribusiness, mineral exploration, and bioengineering threatening our biosphere in ways we could never have imagined even twenty years ago.

The art of writing is not as solitary as one might think. When it finally dawns on us one day that our task as writers is to share what we know of the human spirit, we suddenly discover that we were never truly alone.

Only when we accept the fact that the world is never exactly as we see it through our individual lens of perception will we be able to accept ourselves or the mystery that is life itself.

The coma carried me into a world where time and space seemed to vanish; it was a dreamlike existence in which people, places, and situations shifted as quickly as thoughts. I had a profound sense of being at a crossroads, a turning point, somewhere between death and life...

we begin to see that we are spiritually linked with people halfway around the world, and with those who lived hundreds, even thousands of years ago. We begin to see that we emerge from, and are the expressions of, a single consciousness that is limited by neither time nor space.

Always remember that writing is an alliance between author and reader. With every line we put down on the page, we need to leave room for the reader's imagination and intellect.

There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction. This may very well describe why we write memoir, for it is often in the delayed reaction, long after the actual living, that we can fully savor the fruits of our experience. [Foreword of Shimmering Images by Lisa Dale Norton]