Quotes About Reflection

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. PABLO PICASSO

It's not the answer that enlightens, but the question. EUGENE IONESCO

Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance. M. C. RICHARDS

True life is lived when tiny changes occur. LEO TOLSTOY Creative living requires the luxury of time, which we carve out for ourselves—even if it's fifteen minutes for quick morning pages and a ten-minute minibath after work.

Boredom is just "What's the use?" in disguise. And "What's the use?" is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair.

Writing is a way not only to metabolize life but to alchemize it as well. It is a way to transform what happens to us in our own experience. It is a way to move from passive to active. We may still be the victims of circumstance, but by our understanding those circumstances we place events within the ongoing context of our own life, that is, the life we own.

Today, I view myself as a pilgrim. I take stock of the distances I have traveled. I take time to map the route I now choose.

The brain enjoys writing. It enjoys the act of naming things, the processes of association and discernment. Picking words is like picking apples: this one looks delicious.

Spending time in solitude with your artist child is essential to self-nurturing.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order . . . the continuous thread of revelation. EUDORA WELT

Pages clarify our yearnings. They keep an eye on our goals. They may provoke us, coax us, comfort us, even cajole us, as well as prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. If we are drifting, the pages will point that out. They will point the way True North. Each morning, as we face the page, we meet ourselves. The pages give us a place to vent and a place to dream. They are intended for no eyes but our own.

A mind too active is no mind at all. THEODORE ROETHKE

When people ask, "Why do we write morning pages?" I joke, "To get to the other side." They think I am kidding, but I'm not. Morning pages do get us to the other side: the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods. Above all, they get us beyond our Censor. Beyond the reach of the Censor's babble we find our own quiet center, the place where we hear the still, small voice that is at once our creator's and our own.

Pages must be done longhand. The computer is fast—too fast for our purposes. Writing by computer gets you speed but not depth. Writing by computer is like driving a car at 85 mph. Everything is a blur. "Oh, my God, was that my exit?" Writing by hand is like going 35 mph. "Oh, look, here comes my exit. And look, it has a Sonoco station and a convenience store.

Faced with a divorce or separation, faced with the need to terminate a long-standing friendship, I must remind myself that sometimes the most loving involvement is a non-involvement.

When the mind becomes quiet, you feel nourished. SWAMI CHIDVILASANANDA

The act of making art exposes a society to itself. Art brings things to light. It illuminates us. It sheds light on our lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says, See?

us a place to vent and a place to dream. They are intended for no eyes but our own. Virginia

put us in touch with our spiritual core. For others, it's a trip to a greenhouse. The point is that even the slightest attention to our impoverished areas can nurture them.

People are told to JUST LET GO. And they would, if they knew what they are holding on to.

The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain—the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, "unutterably alone.

Conectar nos coloca en un estado de consciencia y, desde la consciencia, podemos realizar cambios, o al menos intentarlo.

In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now.

You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. your creative child. That means no lovers, friends, spouses, children—no taggers-on of any stripe.