Quotes from Peter Heller

Ren thought she was beautiful; if her features had a purity it was because, he thought, the light that burned inside her was pure.

Ich schließe meine Augen. Was da drinnen los ist. Was da zappelt, was da wie ein blinder Fisch durch den Schmerz schwimmt, für immer und ewig. Was da lebt, was bleibt. Was sich erneuert, die Liebe und den Schmerz lebendig hält. Die Liebe ist das Flussbett, das sich mit Schmerz füllt. Es füllt sich jeden Tag aufs Neue mit Tränen.

Fitting. This was one of our favorite camps in the world. Year after year. If his spirit could look out. To the changing creek, season to season. I lay him in wrapped in the quilt and I say Goodbye, bud. You are Jasper. My heart. We are never apart, not here, not there.

I never thought I would be a painter. That I might make a world and walk into it and forget myself. That art would be something I would not have any way of not doing.

The sadness of our world, it underlies everything like a water.

he thought he could sit on this deck and watch that stream for the rest of his life.

The albatross hit the top and canted her soft belly to the storm, and made a screaming banked peel-out downwind and over the other side. I don't know if anyone else on the ship saw her. To me, she was a visitation. Not harbinger or annunciation, but a simple reminder of a wold that worked, that was at home with itself and friends with storm.

You lose yourself and just about vanish and the painting asserts and fills and flows over the dam and down into the streambed of everything you have ever experienced and thought, and carries you both on a current that takes you into a country that neither of you have ever seen. Where you have never been.

She must have been freezing, and it filled Pete with gratitude for the no-bullshit people of the earth, the people who knew what had to be done and would find their own damn coat later.

Rich people are another species. Sort of lost in their own way. It's a good thing they have country clubs and shit because it keeps them kinda corralled up in one place.

He was aggregating memory like a wall against extinction and the little boxes of slides were his bricks.

Rock rock. Back and forth. Lull. Push. Release. Swing back. The stars, the leaves, even the sound of the creek throbbing back and forth. Of a boat. Of a hammock. Of a child's swing. Of a womb. Back and forth. Rock rock. Smell of cold current, of stone, manure, blossom. Sleep.

Dusk was moving over the water with a stillness that turned half the world to glass. The wall of mountains had gone to shadow as had the reflections at their feet. In the stillness the rings of rising trout appeared like raindrops. Slowly, in silence, the dark water tilted away from the remaining daylight.

I mean it felt my heart might just burst. Bursting is different than breaking. Like there is no way to contain how beautiful.

our job as citizens, apparently, is the pursuit of happiness. Something I always have to gird myself for. I'd much rather just be happy, or not.

It didn't get better, not in my book. I mean if you weren't looking too hard at what just happened or who might be down the road or at some other stuff. Maybe living well is the art of not looking at that, at the other stuff, when you don't have to. Or being okay with it.

A fire was good company.

there was nothing really more important other than treating animals and people with decency and respect—

God, the names. You could almost walk into the words themselves." Now Jack put down his cup. He'd never heard anyone say that and it was true. For a moment he lost the blithe tempo of their conversation that had shielded him from his own shyness.

Paulson said there was a principle in aesthetics: the more you prettify something, the more you risk undermining its value. Its essential value.

And sometimes the places that happenstance sent you weren't as vague as a direction, sometimes they were as steel-cast and unforgiving as a set of rails. And sometimes the only way to jump the rails and set a new course was to have a wreck.

More than that, he thought she had a certain bravery he rarely encountered and couldn't define: it was something to do with a willingness to look beyond the surface of things, into their heart, and he wondered if that was an essential part of being an artist. It was more than just curiosity, it seemed to him she was restless for truth somehow.

What he'd noticed in all true masters was that the focus turned soon, or immediately, into full absorption by the act itself.

Pursuing fun is exhausting. Having fun is just fun. Much more relaxing just to do your work, don't you think? I mean if you enjoy it.