Quotes About Renewal

I like to dissociate myself from the person I was even three hours ago. It's a natural requirement to be a writer.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I am never writing a breakup record again, by the way. I'm done with being a bitter witch.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

The beauty of the day is the only thing that doesn't fade in time. Day after day, such beauty revives itself.

The wall read: ELPHIE LIVES OZMA LIVES THE WIZARD LIVES and then EVERYONE LIVES BUT US.

Winter still comes after autumn though you may have died over the summer.

Chovia bastante naquela manhã. A luz tinha um tom acinzentado e musguento devido às nuvens baixas. Teve de admitir que a menina não era um cadáver. Estava viva. Talvez tivesse nascido gelada, mas agora estava viva. Ainda suja com o sangue do nascimento e o início aguado das suas fezes, Liir levou-a até à porta e ergue-a para a chuva. Lavada, revelou-se verde.

By so giving up, of course, it renews itself- that is the secret

Children surrender nothing when faced with the world: it is the world that gives up, over and over again. By so giving up, of course, it renews itself—that is the secret. Dying in order to live, that sort of thing.

The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. It is, on the whole, a merciful arrangement. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. . . .

Those who sit in the house of grief will someday sit in the garden.

How many times in a life, he thought, will I lie down in a darkness whose character I cannot imagine, to see what daybreak reveals of my new circumstances? Or is that every day of my life?

Every day you die a little and get a new chance to find out how next to live.

Was it an accident... or is it just that the world unwraps itself to you again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew?

All green things brown.

When a scarecrow blows apart in a gale wind, the farmer just props up another one. It's the job to be done that's important, not who does it.

My blessing, and also my advice. Spend what you have, give it away, Dirk. All, all away. The only chance to replenish yourself is to use up what you are given. It's called redemption in some circles.

I needed to change the lens through which I viewed everything familiar.

Finally, it became perfectly obvious. A finish line marks a stopping point. Once we stop, we must start over, and starting over is harder than continuing.

do once in a while.

I cleaned out my fridge, and now I feel like I can change careers!

A day goes by. Every shiver of grass counts. The shallows and dapples in air that give grass life are like water. The bobcat returns nightly. During easy jags of sleep the dog's dream-paws chase coyotes. I ride to the sheep. Empty sky, an absolute blue. Empty heart. Sunburned face blotches brown. Another layer of skin to peel, to meet myself again in the mirror. A plane passes overhead—probably the government trapper. I'm waving hello, but he speeds away.

To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves. Losing myself to it-if I can- I do not fall, or if I do, I'm only another waterfall. Collected in: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature by Lorraine Anderson