Donald Miller
… fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. — Donald Miller, A Million Miles In a Thousand Years ( Thomas Nelson Inc; 33265th edition, January 1, 2009)
Category: Biographical
Annie Dillard
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (Harper Perennial, November 12, 2013)
T.S. Eliot
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. — T.S. Eliot, from “La Figlia che Piange,” quoted in The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse by Lyndall Gordon (Virago Press, 2022)
Frederick Buechner
It was the upward-reaching and fathomlessly hungering, heart-breaking love for the beauty of the world at its most beautiful, and, beyond that, for that beauty east of the sun and west of the moon which is past the reach of all but our most desperate desiring and is finally the beauty of Beauty itself, of… Continue reading Frederick Buechner
Charles Simic
One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other. ― Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs ( University of Michigan Press, February 15th 1995) Originally published 1995.
Franz Kafka
I have this vision: That I would finally come and find you. Scattered pieces of distance would not stand in my way. Not needing words; the barest of glimpses would suffice for you and me. – Franz Kafka, Letters To Milena (Schocken; Rev Upd edition April 7, 1990)
Ernest Hemingway
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good… Continue reading Ernest Hemingway
Rebecca Solnit
We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the… Continue reading Rebecca Solnit
Albert Camus
There are some individuals who have too strong a craving, a will, and a nostalgia for happiness ever to reach it. They always retain a bitter and passionate aftertaste, and that’s the best they can hope for. — Albert Camus, Correspondence, 1932-1960. (University of Nebraska Press; annotated edition edition May 1, 2003)
Sarah Manguso
The catalog of emotion that disappears when someone dies, and the degree to which we rely on a few people to record something of what life was to them, is almost too much to bear. — Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary. (Graywolf Press; 1St Edition edition March 3, 2015)
The Vale of Soul-Making 