Louise Quotes

When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.

Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.

We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.

Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.

Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.

Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.

We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.

[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right

When someone stabs you it's not your fault that you feel pain.

Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me.

From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.

Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.

They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.

The four sayings that lead to wisdom: I was wrong I'm sorry I don't know I need help

Female friendships that work are relationships in which women help each other belong to themselves.

I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.

You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we're not. We always have the power of our minds…Claim and consciously use your power.

some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.

Every thought we think is creating our future.

He who laughs last laughs the laughiest.

To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human.

I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.

It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.

Even before you touched me, I belonged to you; all you had to do was look at me.

Just Me, Just Me Sweet Marie, she loves just me (She also loves Maurice McGhee). No she don't, she loves just me (She also loves Louise Dupree). No she don't, she loves just me (She also loves the willow tree). No she don't, she loves just me! (Poor, poor fool, why can't you see She can love others and still love thee.)

Or - perhaps - I should just worry about my own behavior and let others be who they are.

May today there be peace within. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

He says we should take it easy and that maybe he overreacted a bit." Dave said, "A bit? That's like Hitler saying, 'Oooh, I just meant to go for a little walk, but then I accidentally invaded Poland.

But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas.

I am exhausted by trying to get along with the Lord.

Why love what you will lose? There is nothing else to love.

There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?' She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin. "They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean." Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. "I don't know. I need help. I'm sorry. I was wrong'.

Don't mess with anybody on a Monday. It's a bad, bad day.

When darkness is at its darkest, a star shines the brightest.

Intense love always leads to mourning.

Life is choice. All day, everyday. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. so when I'm observing that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make

I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem there is no perfect ending. Indeed, there are infinite endings. Or perhaps, once one begins, there are only endings.

He said, 'Hi, gorgeous,' which I think is nice. I admire honesty.

The master said You must write what you see. But what I see does not move me. The master answered Change what you see.

The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.

I prefer to have some beliefs that don't make logical sense.

Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.

Honestly, what planet do these people live on? And why isn't it farther away?

I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves.

Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.

Thinking there is something better out there in the world, something worth more than you already have- of all my mistakes,that was my biggest.

They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.

Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving, you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead.

At first I saw you everywhere. Now only in certain things, at longer intervals.

I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.

I have noticed that the Universe loves Gratitude. The more Grateful you are, the more goodies you get

Oh Blimey O‘Reilly's pantyhose...what is the point of Shakespeare? I know he is a genius and so on, but he does rave on. What light doth through yonder window break? It's the bloody moon, for God's sake, Will, get a grip!!

Things which do not grow and change are dead things.

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.

You've been criticising yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.

I've been treating you with courtesy and respect because that's the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.

Where there is love there is courage, where there is courage there is peace, where there is peace there is God. And when you have God, you have everything.

Your beliefs become your thoughts Your thoughts become your words Your words become your actions Your actions become your destiny. Mahatma Ghandi,” he said. “There’s more, but I can’t remember it all.

I am willing to release the need to be unworthy. I am worthy of the very best in life, and I now lovingly allow myself to accept it

What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough? It becomes your entire history.

If you fall down those stairs and break both of your legs, don't come running to me!

Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.

I don’t need your praise to survive. I was here first, before you were here, before you ever planted a garden. And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon are left, and the sea, and the wide field. I will constitute the field.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

Here is another marvy glimpse into the gothic basement that I call my mind.

I say “Out” to every negative thought that comes to my mind. No person, place, or thing has any power over me, for I am the only thinker in my mind. I create my own reality and everyone in it.

There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions.

Rosie get off your desk, and please put your beard away.

I wanted to kill her and make her eat her fringe. And her knickers.

[Harriet] hated math. She hated math with every bone in her body. She spent so much time hating it that she never had time to do it.

So what is wild? What is wilderness? What are dreams but an internal wilderness and what is desire but a wildness of the soul?

That's a lovely piece," Kat said, pointing at a Louise XV armoire near the fireplace. The man raised his eyebrows. "Did you come to steal it?" "Darn it," Kat said with a snap of her fingers."I knew I should have brought my big purse.

Sometimes you have to lie. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.

No matter where we live on the planet or how difficult our situation seems to be, we have the ability to overcome and transcend our circumstances.

Trying to fall out of love is like trying to climb a mountain. Blindfolded, on crutches, naked in a hail storm.

Things are strongest where they're broken.

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.

Oh no. I've just accidently paid a visit to the cakeshop of love. I haven't put back my Italian cakey, but I have accidentally picked up a Dave the Tart.

In the infinity of life where I am, All is perfect, whole and complete, I no longer choose to believe in old limitations and lack, I now choose to begin to see myself As the Universe sees me --- perfect, whole, and complete.

Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.

...whatever/ returns from oblivion/ returns to find a voice.

All is well. Everything is working out for my highest good. Out of this situation only good will come. I am safe." It will work miracles in your life.

If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.

You are not ashamed of our luuurve, are you, Jas?' 'Look, shut up, people might hear.' 'What do you mean, the people who live in the telephone?

Look, I can't go out with you, because...because...because I'm a lesbian.

The point of power is always in the present moment.

You get on a train, you disappear. You write your name on the window, you disappear. There are places like this everywhere, places you enter as a young girl from which you never return.

Ravens are the birds I'll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.

...which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as humble as the spider's, what is beautiful that I make? What is elegant? What feeds the world?

Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?

I am soooo excited, I am over-excited. I'm hysterical, I may have to slap my own face in a minute at this rate.

I am tired of having hands she said I want wings — But what will you do without your hands to be human? I am tired of human she said I want to live on the sun —

Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortuante who feels witnessed as a peron,outside relationships with parents by another adult.

Who hurt you, once, so far beyond repair that you would meet each overture with curling lip? While we, who knew you well, your friends, (the focus of your scorn) could see your courage in the face of fear, your wit, and thoughtfulness, and will remember you with something close to love.

Deep at the center of my being there is an infinite well of love.

I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not?

Anyway, then it said on the news, 'And tonight the Prime Minister has just got to Number Ten.' I looked down at Jas and said, 'Ooer.' Meaning he'd got to number ten on the snogging scale. And then we both laughed like loons. Vati just looked at us like we were mad.

When uncle Eddie does his impression of 'Like a Virgin' it's like Madonna is coming out of his body!' Christ what an image.

If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife.

I often think we should have tattooed on the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, 'I might be wrong.

Bad things happen whether you're scared or not, so you might as well not bother being scared. It's a waste of time.

You are the only person who thinks in your mind! You are the power and authority in your world.

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

Think thoughts that make you happy. Do things that make you feel good. Be with people who make you feel good. Eat things that make your body feel good. Go at a pace that makes you feel good.

I have never understood the importance of having children memorize battle dates. It seems like such a waste of mental energy. Instead, we could teach them important subjects such as How the Mind Works, How to Handle Finances, How to Invest Money for Financial Security, How to be a Parent, How to Create Good Relationships, and How to Create and Maintain Self-Esteem and Self-Worth. Can you imagine what a whole generation of adults would be like if they had been taught these subjects in school along with their regular curriculum?

Her clothes were filled with safety pins and hidden tears.

Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson." "Lake and Palmer?" "Ralph and Waldo.

HOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!

What shall I say? I must tread a fine line between glaciosity and friendlinosity. With just a hint of 'you don't know what you are missing, my fine-feathered friend.

When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor’s image blurred with my sudden tears. “Hey, Boo,” I said. “Mr. Arthur, honey,” said Atticus, gently correcting me. “Jean Louise, this is Mr. Arthur Radley. I believe he already knows you.

To raise the veil. To see what you're saying goodbye to.

When Mutti and Vati came in I didn't speak to them. I just unfurled the CAT MOLESTERS banner I had made.

We're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector," said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?

Don’t believe everything you think.

Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated a second over the chamomile. .... But no. Violent death demanded Earl Grey.

I will not be distracted by noise, chatter, or setbacks. Patience, commitment, grace, and purpose will guide me.

You make me laugh like a loon on loon tablets!

When every inch of the world is known, sleep may be the only wilderness that we have left.

Dad has brought me a cup of tea in bed this morning! I said, 'Vati, why are you waking me up in the middle of the night? Are you on fire?

Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.

What in the name of Hitler's panties and matching bra set was she talking about?

When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives.

And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

...don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience...

What was difficult was the travel, which, on arrival, is forgotten.

The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.

Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature. They lead "still" lives, waiting.

I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth?

The unsaid, for me, exerts great power...

Society is like this card game here, cousin. We got dealt our hand before we were even born, and as we grow we have to play as best as we can.

He had everything a dream boy should have. Back, front, sides, Everything. A head.

Biology The film turns out to be about bees. It is a film about a bee center. How crap is this going to be? An hour later That was the best thing I have seen for ages. We made Miss Wilson rewind the bit where the two queens were having a bitch fight.

We are who we are. Sometimes, no matter how much someone might want to, they can’t escape that.

The only time I see the truth is when I cross my eyes.

The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me.

My God, these Feeling types! ... Sensitive people are just tyrannical people - everybody else has to adapt to them.

He takes her in his arms He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you But he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end You're dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

Ole Golly: You know what? You're an individual, and that makes people nervous. And it's gonna keep making people nervous for the rest of your life.

We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You'll see.

What's the difference?" You ask me The difference is, a smile touches my lips When I remember both the memory of you entering my life And the memory of you leaving my life

People who love work, love life.

What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of not recognizing Paradise.

And the kittykats would have to erect scaffolding and a pulley to get him down. Mind you, I wouldn't put that past them. Sometimes when they are behind the sofa supposedly purring, I think they are drilling.

I could have quite literally snogged until the cows came home. And when they came home I would have shouted, "WHAT HAVE YOU COWS COME HOME FOR? CAN'T YOU SEE I'M SNOGGING, YOU STUPID HERBIVORES???

I'm beginning to wonder that if, when we call a woman crazy, we should take a look at the man by her side, and guess at what he has done to drive her to insanity.

There are people who cannot risk loneliness with the experience. They always have to be in a flock and have human contact.

Three Pines is a state of mind. When we choose tolerance over hate. Kindness over cruelty. Goodness over bullying. When we choose to be hopeful, not cynical. Then we live in Three Pines.

I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free.

As she left my room I knew I should shut up. But you know when you should shut up because you really should just shut up...but you keep on and on anyway? Well, I had that.

It's a blessing Madame Gamache and I had at our wedding. It was read at the end of the ceremony. Now you will feel no rain For each of you will be shelter for the other Now you will feel no cold For each of you will be warmth for the other Now there is no loneliness for you Now there is no more loneliness. Now you are two persons, but there is one life before you. Go now to your dwelling place To enter into the days of your togetherness. And may your days be good and long upon this earth. (Apache Blessing)

As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles. She was buoyant by nature; she wanted to travel, go to the theater, go to museums. What he wanted was to lie on the couch with the Times over his face, so that death, when it came, wouldn't seem a significant change.

Through my curtains I can see a big yellow moon. I’m thinking of all the people in the world who will be looking at that same moon. I wonder how many of them haven’t got any eyebrows?

Joy doesn't ever leave, you know. It's always with you. And one day you'll find it again.

Sometimes things are going to happen and the only way out is through.

Fear lives in the head. And courage lives in the heart. The job is to get from one to the other.” “And between the two is the lump in the throat,

Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me.

Its okay I'm wearing really big knickers.

How come we've got these bodies? They are frail supports for what we feel. There are times I get so hemmed in by my arms and legs I look forward to getting past them. As though death will set me free like a traveling cloud... I'll be out there as a piece of the endless body of the world feeling pleasures so much larger than skin and bones and blood.

No, I’m fine. And yes, I mean that sort of FINE,” said Reine-Marie, making reference to the title of one of Ruth’s poetry books, where FINE stood for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.

Where there is love, there is courage Where there is courage, there is peace Where there is peace, there is God And when you have God, you have everything.

Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages.

I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end, not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me. I caution you as I was never cautioned: you will never let go, you will never be satiated. You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger. Your body will age, you will continue to need. You will want the earth, then more of the earth– Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond. It is encompassing, it will not minister. Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you, it will not keep you alive.

What did falling in love do for you? Can you ever really explain it? It filled empty spaces I never knew were empty. It cured a loneliness I never knew I had. It gave me joy. And freedom. I think that was the most amazing part. I suddenly felt both embraced and freed at the same time.

They waited for life to happen to them. They waited for someone to save them. Or heal them. They did nothing for themselves.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

Old love, middle love, the kind of love that knows itself and knows that nothing lasts, is a desperate shared wildness.

The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.

We wondered, sometimes, when your conscience and his would part company, and over what.” Dr. Finch smiled. “Well, we know now. I’m just thankful I was around when the ructions started. Atticus couldn’t talk to you the way I’m talking—” “Why not, sir?” “You wouldn’t have listened to him. You couldn’t have listened. Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise. They must never descend to human level.

I change my life when I change my thinking. I am Light. I am Spirit. I am a wonderful, capable being. And it is time for me to acknowledge that I create my own reality with my thoughts. If I want to change my reality, then it is time for me to change my mind.

The Red Poppy The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me. I have a lord in heaven called the sun, and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, were you like me once, long ago, before you were human? Did you permit yourselves to open once, who would never open again? Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered.

To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.

Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.

I wonder if it is possible to have two boyfriends. I mean, times are changing. Relationships are more complicated. In France men always have mistresses and wives and so on. Henri probably has two girlfriends. He would laugh if you told him you just had one. He would say, 'C'est tres, tres tragique.'

Non...I am DANCING IN MY NUDDY-PANTS!!!' And we both laughed like loons on loon tablets. I danced for ages round the house in my nuddy-pants. Also, I did this brilliant thing-I danced in the front window just for a second whilst Mr. Across the Road was drawing his curtains. He will never be sure if he saw a mirage or not. That is the kind of person I am. Not really the kind of person who goes and raises elks in Whakatane.

If you want to understand your parents more, get them to talk about their own childhood; and if you listen with compassion, you will learn where their fears and rigid patterns come from. Those people who “did all that stuff to you” were just as frightened and scared as you are.

Cold sinks in, there to stay. And people, they'll leave you, sure. There's no return to what was and no way back. There's just emptiness all around, and you in it, like singing up from the bottom of a well, like nothing else, until you harm yourself, until you are a mad dog biting yourself for sympathy. Because there is no relenting.

Looking out of the window at the infinite sky, I prayed out, 'Dear Baby Jesus, I am sorry for my sin, even though I do not know what they are, which seems a bit unfair if it is going to be held against me. But that is your way. And I am not questioning your wisdomosity. In future, however, would it be possible for my life to be not so entirely crap? Thank you.

Living things don't all require light in the same degree. Some of us make our own light: a silver leaf like a path no one can use, a shallow lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples. But you know this already. You and the others who think you live for truth and, by extension, love all that is cold.

What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.

When we expand our thinking and beliefs our love flows freely. When we contract we shut ourselves off. Can you remember the last time when you were in love? Your heart went ahhh!! It was such a wonderful feeling. It is the same with loving yourself except that you will never leave once you have your love for yourself.Its with you for the rest of your life, so you want to make it the best relationship that you can have.

The healing hero, therefore, is the one who finds some creative way out, a way not already known, and does not follow a pattern. Ordinary sick people follow ordinary patterns, but the shaman cannot be cured by the usual methods of healing. He has to find the unique way, the only way that applies to him. The creative personality who can do that then becomes a healer and is recognized as such by his colleagues.

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup. Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins. Don't even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything matches, at all. Except one word to another. Or a thought. Pursue the authentic-decide first what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart. Your heart, that place you don't even think of cleaning out. That closet stuffed with savage mementos. Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner again. Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows, who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books. Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity.

See, anxiety doesn’t just stop. You can have nice moments, minutes where it shrinks, but it doesn’t leave. It lurks in the background like a shadow, like that important assignment you have to do but keep putting off or the dull ache that follows a three-day migraine. The best you can hope for is to contain it, make it as small as possible so it stops being intrusive. Am I coping? Yes, but it’s taking a monumental amount of effort to keep the dynamite inside my stomach from exploding. The

We teach our girls how not to get raped with a sense of doom, a sense that we are fighting a losing battle. When I was writing this novel, friend after friend came to me telling me of something that had happened to them. A hand up their skirt, a boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a night where they were too drunk to give consent but they think it was taken from them anyway. We shared these stories with one another and it was as if we were discussing some essential part of being a woman, like period cramps or contraceptives. Every woman or girl who told me these stories had one thing in common: shame. ‘I was drunk . . . I brought him back to my house . . . I fell asleep at that party . . . I froze and I didn’t tell him to stop . . .’ My fault. My fault. My fault. When I asked these women if they had reported what had happened to the police, only one out of twenty women said yes. The others looked at me and said, ‘No. How could I have proved it? Who would have believed me?’ And I didn’t have any answer for that.

The fault lies with us, and only us. It’s not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it’s definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it’s us and our choices. But, but’ – now her eyes shone and she almost vibrated with excitement – ‘the most powerful, spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well. We’re the only ones who can change our lives, turn them around. So all those years waiting for someone else to do it are wasted.

We have these earthly bodies. We don't know what they want. Half the time, we pretend they are under our mental thumb, but that is the illusion of the healthy and the protected. Of sedate lovers. For the body has emotions it conceives and carries through without concern for anyone or anything else. Love is one of those, I guess. Going back to something very old knit into the brain as we were growing. Hopeless. Scorching. Ordinary.

Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.

It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.

Following your own star means isolation, not knowing where to go, having to find out a completely new way for yourself instead of just going on the trodden path everybody else runs along. That's why there's always been a tendency in humans to project the uniqueness and the greatness of their own inner self onto outer personalities and become the servants, the devoted servants, admirers, and imitators of outer personalities. It is much easier to admire a great personality and become a pupil or follower of a guru or a religious prophet, or an admirer of a big, official personality - a President of the United States - or live your life for some military general whom you admire. That is much easier than following your own star. (p. 71)

We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif-books in piles and on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are books waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books...They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables...I can't imagine a home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you'd longed to fall asleep reading the Aspern Papers, and there it is.

One of the elders told him that when he was a boy his grandfather came to him one day and said he had two wolves fighting inside him. One was gray, the other black. The gray one wanted his grandfather to be courageous, and patient, and kind. The other, the black one, wanted his grandfather to be fearful and cruel. This upset the boy, and he thought about it for a few days then returned to his grandfather. He asked, 'Grandfather, which of the wolves will win?' The abbot smiled slightly and examined the Chief Inspector. 'Do you know what his grandfather said?' Gamache shook his head. . . . 'The one I feed,' said Dom Philippe.

Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray. When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move, my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that? Through the birches, I could see the pond. The sun was cutting small white holes in the water. I got up finally; I walked down to the pond. I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself, like a girl after her first lover turning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign. But nakedness in women is always a pose. I was not transfigured. I would never be free.

Everybody knows deep down that life is as much about the things that do not happen as the things that do and that's not something that ought to be glossed over or denied because without frustration there would hardly be any need to daydream. And daydreams return me to my original sense of things and I luxuriate in these fervid primary visions until I am entirely my unalloyed self again. So even though it sometimes feels as if one could just about die from disappointment I must concede that in fact in a rather perverse way it is precisely those things I did not get that are keeping me alive.

Why doesn't it bother her? Seriously, it doesn't. She's not putting on a front. She's in a serious relationship with a guy who has sex with other women for a living, and it doesn't matter to her." "I married a cop." Roarke smiled at her. "We all have our levels of acceptance. He was an LC when they met, just as she was a doctor, and one who often works in dangerous areas of the city." She shot him the same easy smile. "So...if I'd been an LC when we met, you wouldn't have any problem with me banging other guys. Professionally." "None at all, as I'd kick your ass and murder all of them. But that's my level of acceptance.

When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars. Let Persephone get used to it slowly. In the end, he thought, she’d find it comforting. A replica of earth except there was love here. Doesn’t everyone want love? He waited many years, building a world, watching Persephone in the meadow. Persephone, a smeller, a taster. If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all. Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. And when one turns, the other turns— That’s what he felt, the lord of darkness, looking at the world he had constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind that there’d be no more smelling here, certainly no more eating. Guilt? Terror? The fear of love? These things he couldn’t imagine; no lover ever imagines them. He dreams, he wonders what to call this place. First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden. In the end, he decides to name it Persephone’s Girlhood. A soft light rising above the level meadow, behind the bed. He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you’re dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

Depressions and melancholy are often a cover for tremendous greed. At the beginning of an analysis there is often a depressed state of resignation-life has no meaning, there is no feeling of being in life. An exaggerated state can develop into complete lameness. Quite young people give the impression of having the resignation of a bitter old man or woman. When you dig into such a black mood you find that behind it there is overwhelming greed-for being loved, for being very rich, for having the right partner, for being the top dog, etc. Behind such a melancholic resignation you will often discover in the darkness a recurring theme which makes things very difficult, namely if you give such people one bit of hope, the lion opens its mouth and you have to withdraw, and then they put the lid on again, and so it goes on, back and forth.