Quotes About Contemplation

In a room with many windows some thoughts slide past uncatchable, ghostly.

The desire of monks and mystics is not unlike that of artists: to perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary by changing not the world but the eyes that look… To form the intention of new awareness is already to transform and be transformed.

What poems are doing is counterbalancing the mainstream tenor of our culture, which is to do, to be active, to be energetic and to prove one's self… and one of the messages underlying all poems that move us is that we have nothing at all to prove

I moved my chair into sun I sat in the sun The way hunger is moved when called fasting

He himself felt frightened and alarmed when he reflected on the inevitability of old age, sickness and death. He became silent and withdrawn.

Here I am, alone again, alone but not completely by myself, alone without the freedom of not having to think about someone else

I climbed the ditch, walked out into the middle of the prayer stones and stared across to the monks' island. If you stood there and thought you heard mass when it wasn't being sung, how would it be different to standing there when it was being sung? Would the mass in your head be any less real?

We lay on the short grass and looked at the sky, waiting for the tide to go out. Even as we watched the clouds shrank and disappeared, we could see right into the universe.

I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

In her minds eye she sat there, in the domesticated golden sunlight on the velvet sofa, lapped around by carpets and books and mahogany, solitary and content, as if, in fact, cloistered.

Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written -- as long as I keep my senses, at least.

He pushed the coverlet halfway down his body and crossed his arms behind his head. Linc stared at the overhead fixture, his new best friend for the last several days--he'd actually felt like talking to it a few times.

Garza narrowed his eyes, then leaned back in his

Thinking very often resembles napping, but the intent is different. --Stephanie Plum

What was being weighed on the scales of the night

No matter how dark the room gets I can always see. It looks emptier when I put the lights on so I don't do it if I can help it. Brightness disagrees with me: it hurts my eyes, wastes electricity and encourages moths, all sorts of things. I sit in the dark for a number of reasons.

It's asking for trouble to listen to music alone.

A café is for "people who want to be alone but need company for it." –Noel Riley Fitch, Paris Café: The Select Crowd

Everyone is fond of plucky children, kids who launch into adventures, even (within reason) kids who sass back. What about the girl who sits for a long time and watches other children going down the slide, whose legs quiver just from imagining how it will feel to stand at the top of that silver swoop into the unknown?

To see some truths you must stand outside and look in.

To Do Today, 1/17/08 1. Sit and think 2. Reach enlightenment 3. Feed the cats

I want to write a poem about "Truth," "Honor," "Dignity," and whether the toilet paper should roll over or under when you pull on it.

The only time I really think is when I smoke, and I quit smoking years ago.

To be free is to have a zone around you that is private, where you can be with your own thoughts, your own expeirements, for a time, between confrontations with the larger world.