“There is a rhythm to moving through the world alone. You discover what you can and cannot live without, the simple necessities and small joys that define a life. Not food, not shelter, not the basic things a body needs—those are, for her, a luxury—but the things that keep you sane. That bring you joy. That make life bearable.”
“Good day, be grateful. Bad day, be graceful. Be grateful, be graceful, and on it goes.”
“Nothing ever seems impossible in spring, you know.”
“O boatman! Enjoy your skills and touch the river of life in your own unique ways. She will reward you with the treasures that you can t imagine. Those who are in a mad rush of reaching somewhere die empty handed, for the river is endless and time is a trap.”
“Talk about your book like the day you first fell in love. Talk about it with joy...the same joy you took to write it.”
“You will be happy if you look into your heart.”
“I sing the song in my heart.”
“Engage in the work that brings you joy.”
“I thought my life with Kelli could be balanced, mitigated,. That Irene had just been doing it all wrong these years. I thought we could hang out like normal sisters, run errands, go for lattes with Jessica Hendy, and every now and then go off and have a little temper tantrum if Kelli go on my nerves--leave her in the car, assume she d be fine. I d assumed I could indulge myself if need be, that there could be some kind of fulfillment beyond my sister s care--that I didn t have to give myself over to it completely. But here s what I needed to understand--what Irene understood. Either you were all in with Kelli, or you were not. But if you were, Kelli had to become your joy. Kelli would be where you went for meaning. Kelli was what it was all about. And Irene was right about this too-- it was like faith. It was exactly like faith in that you had to stop futzing around and let it take you over. No more hemming and hawing. No more trying to have it both ways. And once you put your petty shit aside --your petty ego and your petty needs and your petty ambitions--that was when at last the world opened up. The world that was Kelli. It was a small world, a circumscribed world but it was your world and you did what you could to make it more beautiful. You focused on hygiene, nourishing meals, a pleasing home that always smelled good. That was your achievement and more important that was you. Once you accept that, you were--and this was strange to think, but the moment I thought it, I realized I put my finger on the savagely beating heart of my mother s philosophy--free. When I was a kid, my mother had a lavishly illustrated encyclopedia of saints she would sometimes flip through with me, and I remember how she always made a point of skipping over Saint Teresa of Avila . She didn t want to talk about the illustration that went with it. It was a photograph of the sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and it was pretty obvious to me even as a child why my mother disapproved. It was a sexy sculpture. The smirking angel prepares to pierce Teresa s heart with his holy spear, and boy oh boy is Saint Teresa ready. Her eyes are closed, her lips are parted, and somehow everything about her marble body, swathed in marble clothing looks to be in motion. Saint Teresa is writhing. She s writhing because that is what it is to be a Catholic Saint. This is your fulfillment. The giving over. The letting go. The disappearance. This is what it takes”
“Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas – at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh.”
“I have enough of everything.”
“Pursue love.”
“Time is now. Live a fuller life.”
“Νομίζω ότι έχουμε χάσει την ικανότητα μας να είμαστε αυθόρμητοι. Είμαστε όλοι σφραγισμένοι απ αυτό το χρόνο, είμαστε όλοι προκαθορισμένοι. Έχουμε ξεχάσει το τι είναι να γελάς και να νιώθεις όμορφα γελώντας.”
“Joy is the only achievement that truly matters. Without it there is no real accomplishment, and all success becomes meaningless.”
“Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.”
“I suspect it is simply a feature of being an adult, what I will call being grown, or a grown person, to have endured some variety of thorough emotional turmoil, to have made your way to the brink, and, if you’re lucky, to have stepped back from it—if not permanently, then for some time, or time to time. Then it is, too, a kind of grownness by which I see three squares of light on my wall, the shadow of a tree trembling in two of them, and hear the train going by and feel no panic or despair, feel no sense of condemnation or doom or horrible align- ment, but simply observe the signs—light and song—for what they are—light and song. And, knowing what I have felt before, and might feel again, feel a sense of relief, which is cousin to, or rather, water to, delight.”