William Saroyan
I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn’t happiness. — William Saroyan, The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills ( Charles Scribner’s Sons; 1st edition, January 1, 1952)
Category: Non-fiction
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)
Annie Dillard
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. — Annie Dillard, from “Living Like Weasels,” Teaching a Stone to Talk (HarperCollins, New York, 2009, Kindle Edition)
John O’Donohue
The geography of your destiny is always clearer to the eye of your soul than to the intentions and needs of your surface mind. — John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong (Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, March 22, 2000)
Etel Adnan
Night is an element of love; like fog. It liberates space, lets freshness cross it. Its magic elevates the body, brings to the surface the mystery of just being alive, being. With or without stars and galaxies, the sky becomes a private territory—the imagination’s own scope. These are moments when one reaches all there is… Continue reading Etel Adnan
William Alexander Percy
The good die when they should live, the evil live when they should die; heroes perish and cowards escape; noble efforts do not succeed because they are noble, and wickedness is consumed in its own nature. Looking at truth is not at first a heartening experience–it becomes so, if at all, only with time, with… Continue reading William Alexander Percy
Rainer Maria Rilke
And the loneliest people above all contribute most to commonality. I have said before that in this vast melody of life, some learn more, some less; therefore, in this big orchestra, everyone has his own role. The one who can perceive the entire melody is at the same time the loneliest and the closest to… Continue reading Rainer Maria Rilke
Wallace Stevens
The best definition of true imagination is that it is the sum of our faculties. Poetry is the scholar’s art. The acute intelligence of the imagination, the illimitable resources of its memory, its power to possess the moment it perceives — if we were speaking of light itself, and thinking of the relationship between objects… Continue reading Wallace Stevens
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Under the blistering day he walked towards the night; and under the ice of the naked stars he longed for the return of day. Happy are the lands of the North whose seasons are poets, the summer composing a legend of snow, the winter a tale of sun. Sad the tropics, where in the sweating-room… Continue reading Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Virginia Woolf
What is meant by ‘reality’? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home… Continue reading Virginia Woolf
The Vale of Soul-Making 