Getting all your addictions under control is like trying to put an octopus to bed.
When KFKD is playing, we are at cross purposes with the river. So we need to sit there, and breathe, calm ourselves down, push back our sleeves, and begin again.
Tom said either you learn to live with paradox and ambiguity or you’ll be 6 years old for the rest of your life.
The bakery, on the other hand, was a family’s understanding that a kid didn’t have to do or achieve or own anything more for the world to care, and even delight in her.
I’m not suggesting that you want to be an author who tells a story in order to teach a moral or deliver a message. If you have a message, as Samuel Goldwyn said, send a telegram.
Of course, there will always be more you could do, but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
Trappings and charm wear off, I’ve learned. The book of welcome says, Let people see you. They see that your upper arms are beautiful, soft and clean and warm, and then they will see this about their own, some of the time. It’s called having friends, choosing each other, getting found, being fished out of the rubble. It blows you away, how this wonderful event happened – me in your life, you in mine.
Love has bridged the high-rises of despair we were about to fall between. Love has been a penlight in the blackest, bleakest nights. Love has been a wild animal, a poultice, a dinghy, a coat. Love is why we have hope.
Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. let’s just say prayer is a communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us. we could call this force Not Me, and Not Preachers Onstage with a Choir of 800. or for convenience we could just say “God”.
We can change. People say we can’t, but we do when the stakes or the pain is high enough. And when we do, life can change. It offers more of itself when we agree to give up our busyness.
You wouldn’t be a writer if reading hadn’t enriched your soul more than other pursuits.
Other days, though, my writing is like a person to me – the person who, after all these years, still makes sense to me.
You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and finally, grief ends up giving you the two best gifts: softness and illumination. Every.
Who knows how much of our stories are true?
It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because you think it means you have lost. But in surrender you have won. And if it were me, after a moment, I would say, Thanks.
They taught me that maturity was the ability to live with unresolved problems.
This is a difficult country to look too different in – the United States of Advertising, as Paul Krassner puts it – and if you are too skinny or too tall or dark or weird or short or frizzy or homely or poor or nearsighted, you get crucified. I did. But.
If you don’t know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.
Just take it bird by bird.
In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained.