Quotes from Gail Godwin

Discontent," Father Maturin said, enunciating the word with a strange vigor and looking straight at Elizabeth, "may be God's catapult, His way of saying: 'Go and try yourself now.

There were only a few stories worth telling, which is why they needed to be told over and over again, until everyone recognized them as his own experience.

People commit thousands of small suicides every day that go unnoticed

If you are an artist, you learn how to trap the yearning and put it where you want it, put it where it goes. That's the secret all true artists come to know.

We could all do with some silence, just sitting back in a dark theater and watching humans living and working and discovering their affinities without any words.

Merry didn't believe Feron had any idea of her homesickness. Now Ritchie was the complete opposite. He loved being away from home and at twelve was making plans for traveling the world. What made him different? Did people who weren't homesick carry their home inside them? And then there were people who wanted to forget the home they came from. She knew Feron must be one of these.

There is a place in me I haven't gone yet.

Let thy good spirit enter my heart and there be heard without utterance, and without the sound of words speak all truth.

What is memory but another narrative form?

What we feel compelled to do, whether it's making art or giving your life to God, evolves out of the inner fabric of our lives, however disguised the patterns may be to us. The work, the vocation, is an attempt on the part of the would-be artist to fulfill in an inner way, in a symbolic way, what the outer world is failing to provide him with in the service of wholeness.

At times ... one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people.

Some things arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.

The act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it.

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more suprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep moving, changing... They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard against congealing.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.

How easy it was to make people happy, when you didn't want or need anything from them.

because you're a child and you have no way to compare your life to other people's lives. Your foremost need is to stay safe within the only life you know.

I'm not sure I know what 'simple-hearted' means," I said haughtily. "When there's no deceit or malice in your heart. Most of us have some; it protects us. People without it are rare.

After all the human noise and conflicts have stopped, the absent person has more room in your heart to spread out and be herself. My mother's been gone ten years and I know her much better now than when we saw each other every day.

May their having each other make more of them both.

There are things we can't undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life.

The future arches above us all like a giant question mark, looming or embracing by whims and turns.