Quotes from Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In our time, there are still many, like those in the Good Samaritan story, who being of the religious classes in that time, purposely crossed to the other side of the road, and passed by the injured and bleeding.

People used to grow up in small communities where folk wisdom was passed down. But we don't live there anymore. We can't go next door to your aunt and ask her for the answers.

We all wait for a mirror to show us who we are, to validate us. When we hear something about ourselves that we have never heard before, it feels like a blessing, and it gives power.

Some say that sudden knowledge of mystical matters is accomplished only in complete quietude, or that Creator, in one of God's many forms, appears only in orderly ways that are beauteous and picturesque, or that the mystical appears only in completely silent ways. All are true. Except for the 'only' part.

Than Shwe ordered the confiscation of all cell phones and laptops and computers so no reportage could come out of Burma. It seemed clear that a demon, something diabolical, rather than something compassionate and human was in charge of Burma.

If logic was anything, all men would ride sidesaddles.

It's not by accident that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears as the understanding of our own inner wild nature fades.

The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry.

The desire to force love to live only in its most positive form is what causes love ultimately to fall over dead.

Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything - we need only listen.

God forgives us. ... Who am I not to forgive?

When seeking guidance, don't ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.

When you focus with soul eyes, / You will see home in many, many places.

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you.

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

The most important thing is to hold on, hold out, for your creative life, for your solitude, for your time to be and do, for your very life.

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and laughter 'til they bloom, 'til you yourself burst into bloom.

This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest.

Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.....For years we have been learning, practicing, been in training for...and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving.

I have to go to the woods, and I have to meet the wolf, or else my life will never begin.

A woman who is starved for her real soul-life may look 'cleaned up and combed' on the outside, but on the inside she is filled with dozens of pleading hands and empty mouths.

I am built close to the ground and of extravagant body.

Artfulness is not simple entertainment, especially during upheaval, unleashing creative life is sacred duty.