Quotes About Reflection

and I who live in the basement one level down from the world

they lift their faces to the past

not looking up but lost in pause

they say the herons used to hang like lamps here giving off gloom

three people in raincoats losing their tracks in the snow walking as far as the edge and back again with the trees exhausted tapping at the sky

rewinding and grieving rewinding and grieving

Autumn is the season when you know what's coming next is harder than what is now. In pale spring you look forward to bright summer; in hot summer to the cool of fall; in winter to the hope of spring. In fall, you watch what you have blow away.

When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?

Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.

And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be.

I made dangerous choices in those years, thinking myself bold and adventurous. Later I would come to understand that I hadn't been daring at all, just driven by confusion and hormones. The person capable of true daring, I knew now, possessed two admirable qualities: curiosity and courage.

Occasionally, when trapped by memories, I would mistake change for loss, and grieve...

But it was difficult, this living in real time only, and not diluting it by looking back or skipping forward. No wonder it's never really caught on with most people, I thought. It's just too hard.

Peut-on changer de paysage extérieur sans déranger son paysage intérieur? Les voyages qu'on fait en soi-même? Aujourd'hui, je suis retournée dans mon passé, puis je suis partie vers un avenir qui prenait forme quelque part à la lisière de ma pensée. Mais je me suis aussi rendue dans un endroit rarement visité : l'innocence du moment présent.

Sometimes it was hard for me to connect the boy I knew—the skinny smart kid who collected lead soldiers and pursued Boy Scout merit badges—with the phenomenally successful man he'd become. But sooner or later, when we were together, some remark would inevitably trigger childhood memories and then we'd be off, zipping down a path that existed now only for the two of us.

All his beauty, wit and grace Lie forever in one place, He who sang and sprang and moved Now, in death, is only loved.

It was probable, I thought, that what I disliked in him was what Nour had disliked in me, and that the whole world was mad.

The paintings seemed to bear the same relation to reality as prayers to the vision of God.

How the vulgar loved portents, prodigies and the untoward. Only the religious knew how embarrassing they could be - and quite beside the point.

She often noticed it was only when we shared the same qualities that we recognised them in other people.

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.