Quotes About Transformation

How it was. How it was that the earth could open up under you and swallow you whole, close above you as if you never were. Like Persephone snatched by the god. The ground opened up and out he came, sweeping her into the black chariot. Then down they plunged, under the ground, into the darkness, and the earth closed over her head, and she was gone, as if she had never been.

purification in fire. public cremation

If this was a sandalwood pyre she would have thrown herself in and this paper she'd become would have caught fire and she and him could sail away like two birds.

At times like this I surprise myself, how I've managed to create something of a life on this foggy shore out of the broken pieces of myself, scavenged from the sea like flotsam. Or is it jetsam…it irks me not to know the difference.

A month ago she would have been embarrassed at the confidence. Now she felt a surprising kinship. She was a citizen of the new land, a country she had never before visited, only a rumor, this vast unseen tract, its boundary exactly that of the whole world, taking up the space and shape of the world but completely unlike it. It had a different atmosphere, hard to breathe, and how heavy you were here, it pulled you down like the gravity on Jupiter.

I looked at my life and saw quite clearly that I was not surviving it in the turquoise house. I was letting my sails crust up with salt. I had to stop playing johnny johnny and concentrate on preparing for rain, preparing for rescue.

This ragged heart, she said, pulling at her kimono. I should rip it out and bury it for compost.

I wasn't beautiful anymore. Now I looked like what I was, a raw wound.

Time has taken on an utterly different quality for me. What difference does a year make? In a perverse way, I pity the women who are still a part of time, trapped by it, how many months, how many days. I have been cut free

In stages, that's how. First you let go of the things you loved.

There was power in me now, where there had been none.

It's their skins I'm peeling," she said. "The skins of the insipid scribblers, which I graft to the page, creating monsters of meaninglessness.

Time has taken on an utterly different quality for me. What difference does a year make? In a perverse way, I pity the women who are still a part of time, trapped by it, how many months, how many days. I have been cut free, I move among centuries.

The phoenix must burn to emerge

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that isn't working. To perceive the world differently we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now and dissolve the fear in our minds.

How else can we become reconciled, except one individual at a time? This Jesus you seek did not come to address nations. He washed the wounds of lepers. He dined with sinners. He healed all who came to him. One person at a time.

I think that is why—why God allows hard things in life. To prepare us. To knock off rough edges—pride, bias, envy, selfishness—so that when we get to heaven we will be more in tune—more able to enjoy the beautiful things we'll find there. Maybe that's what the rewards will be. A deeper appreciation of what we are given—what we are a part of.

Thank you, Lord, I prayed, for turning something bad into something good.

painful experiences can be used to better prepare us for heaven. You see, if we let it, even pain can shape us—make us better people—get rid of some of the ugly parts of our humanity.

This is true of all of us. It is a huge change, from unbelief to knowing God's presence, from perception of only what we can see, hear, and feel to a new realm, the spiritual world. We enter into this like infants.

Unfortunately, unless we're focused on building up our courage, which gives us our self-confidence and all that we need to make quantum change in our lives, the voice of fear will always take the lead inside our minds.

I love pretending to be other people. The more unlike me they are the better - I find other people endlessly fascinating and myself incredibly boring.

The 21st century will be quite unlike the preceding two centuries, in which power was located in Europe and the U.S., and the rest of the world consisted of mere supplicants and bit players.

The similarity between Iron Man and Green Lantern is, unlike Superman or any of the X-Men or Spider-Man, anyone can be Green Lantern or Iron Man. All you need is the ring or the suit.