Quotes About Reflection

Memory feeds imagination.

Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.

But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei

After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

I lost twins at 14 weeks, and I had to have an D and C on my birthday.

In our busy, busy culture in which even teens have incredibly complicated schedules, "wasting" time seems to mean, "having a block of time that's not booked." That's not it at all, because, believe it or not, busy, busy time can be wasted time, too. And, to make it even more complicated, an hour spent sitting outside doing "nothing" can actually be the opposite of wasted time. That hour just might be the best and most moral use of time you've had today.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they're going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

I don't think I'm such an amazing person who needs to be written about.

The word divorce which stood stark in the future reached back into the past, how far?

Moral decisions. She had thought she was done with them. You did your best and then wondered for the rest of your life if you'd done the right thing.

Remembering what a disagreeable experience madness had been, she averted her thoughts with haste.

Religion has been defined as designed to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. We do well to think of the parables of Jesus as doing the afflicting. Therefore, if we hear a parable and think, 'I really like that' or, worse, fail to take any challenge, we are not listening well enough.

Judas, too, is in the image and likeness of the divine. He is not a demon, although he may seem to us to be one. He is a human being. And we cannot afford to demonize human beings. Judas calls us to conscience.

Jesus is about to give up his life, which requires determining what a life is worth. And that means we all have to determine what our own lives are worth. What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? What are our values, and have we lived up to them?

Holy Week is a time to think about risk, because that's what this whole Passion narrative represents.

During Lent you have the opportunity to think about your life alongside the life of Jesus, inviting inward transformation and then outward action.

Our role as historians is to ask, "What would these stories have conveyed to the people who first heard them?" Our role as readers is also to ask, "What do these stories mean to me, and what have they meant to my community and to my tradition over time and across the globe?

I climb to the very top step and look behind me at the wall of memories. Who are we in the end? A collection of photos? How do we know what is truly lived if we cannot remember it?

Did you die last night only to be reborn with dawns light? Into this skin you wear. Eyes that can't see. Ears that can't hear. A mind that holds no truth. You died but forgot to leave. The past crawls into the present, birthing the future. Shell-shocked. Shell locked. And all the answers. On the inside. Your mind mirrors. A kaleidoscope. You inside you inside you.

A dollar for afternoon dreams is expensive and cheap.

God didn't ask to be prayed or worshiped at church, we did.

A good lover will do that, see something worthwhile in you that you never knew was there. And when there's something you don't like to see in yourself a good lover won't see it either.

To all the women and the men who ever loved me just a little.