Quotes About Connection

One of the first places where I started to respond to song lyrics was in reggae music. A lot of what I was responding to were references to the Old Testament. It was not that I had to adapt the lyrics to the sound. Reggae and the Old Testament are bound up together. There wasn't anything that I had to do.

I was two years old when I saw the mandolin for the first time, and I just loved it. I just loved the sound of it, the shape of it even, and the way it looks. And I still love it, which is a testament to something.

When I was young, I had an 'aha' moment in church. There was a thing called testimony service, and somebody would sing a song, and everyone else would join in, finding a note where they fit. During one of those, a light went on in my head. In that moment, I heard everything - Parliament, the Staple Singers, Curtis Mayfield, Prince - in there.

A poem can provide testimony. A poem can provide solace. It can provide a connection.

People want chat histories. They're a permanent testimony of a relationship.

It is the gift of stories that most repays life among settled people.

I often tell students that we should aspire to be amanuenses to the land: to let the land speak (in all its voices, human and otherwise), then take dictation, and try to get some of the words right. "How do you know when you get the words right?" they ask. "You know," I reply. When we do, the leaves not only speak; they positively sing.

The people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive.

I want to cry in your arms for a hundred years; I want to wake up in your arms for a hundred years.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

As I scrubbed the floor I was scrubbing part of the world. And I was scrubbing my mind to make it clear. It was work that made me think clear, and it was work that made me humble. I could never talk fast, and I could never say what I meant to people, or tell them what they meant to me. My tongue was loosened by my feelings. It was with my hands and with my back and shoulders that I could say how I felt. I had to talk with my arms and my strong hands.

If you have fairy blood, even in the tiniest degree, you must live close to Fairy Land, and eat a little fairy food, or else you will always be hungry.

Highly creative people have a gift for connecting supposedly unrelated elements and ideas. They cross borders without regard for customs posts or No Trespassing signs. They throw suspension bridges across great distances. These elegant and unexpected combinations flow together beautifully in the twilight zone, where metaphor and resemblance rules in place of logic and classification.

Everything that enters our field of perception means something, large or small. Everything speaks to us, if we will take off our headphones and hear a different sound track. Everything corresponds. We travel better in the forest of symbols when we are open and available to all the forms of meaning that are watching†and waiting for us.

We are connected, like it or not, to the ancestors of our biological families, and their templates

So, I paid you a compliment," Joanna said. "Yeah." Joanna laughed. "So do I get one back?" she asked. "Oh, sure," James said. "You're really like . . . nice." "Can't I get any better than nice?" "Beautiful," James said. "You're beautiful." "That's more like it," Joanna said. "Want to kiss me?" "Um, OK," James said.

be in touch before the end of the day.

James found his sister's head on his shoulder, then her hand sliding under the armrest and resting on his bare knee. James put his own hand on top, with his fingers spread between Lauren's and they stayed that way for ages.

James had learned something about girls: if you want them to like you, don't worry about buying gifts, or saying the right thing, or where to take them. What you need to do is grab the nearest brat and stick it on your lap.

I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be.

Got your eye full?" asked Sara aggressively as he looked at her, repeating the first words she had ever said to him. "Yes, I have," he said smiling.

It always looked to me like she was smiling. In fact, I know she was. Lots if things smile, like a flower to the sun. And one thing sure. I knew that just like I could smile to see Pinky, she sure could smile to see me.

A fence sets men together, not apart.

To watch him sit a horse was better than hearing music. Every motion did easy. He and his animal were one graceful entity, as though they'd not been asked to work, but to waltz.