See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ― Anna Akhmatova, Anna Of All The Russias: A Life Of Anna Akhmatova by Elaine Feinstein. (Vintage, April 10, 2007) Originally published 2005.
Fear knocked at the door and faith answered. No one was there. — Anonymous. Found in an English pub after one of the many London bombings by Hitler during World War II.
The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to… Continue reading Rebecca Solnit
Poetry remakes and prolongs language; every poetic language begins by being a secret language, that is, the creation of a personal universe, of a completely closed world. The purest poetic act seems to re-create language from an inner experience that … reveals the essence of things. — Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. (Princeton… Continue reading Mircea Eliade
Someday it all comes. — Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux October 1, 1990) Originally published 1968.
We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about. – Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth. (Anchor June 1, 1991) Originally published 1988.
The gods perceive what lies in the future, and mortals, what occurs in the present, but wise men apprehend what is imminent. — Philostratus, Life of Apolloniur of Tyans, VII, 7. Edited by Christopher P. Jones, vol. 1 (Books I-IV) & 2 (Books V-VIII), Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2005 (Loeb Classical Library no. 16… Continue reading Philostratus
