But you do not need your fear in the realm of creative expression.
The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels – that’s creative living. The courage to go on that hunt in the first place – that’s what separates a mundane existence from a more enchanted one.
There is only so long that a person can keep her enthusiasms locked away within her heart before she longs to share it with a fellow soul, and Alma had many decades of thoughts much overdue for sharing.
Everyone is sorry. It’s good to be sorry – but don’t make a fetish of it.
How many people have I heard claim their children as the greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It’s the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy- If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.
Your worth as a hostess consists in displaying the talents of your guests, not crowing about your own.
I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person – the magnification of one life – is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody’s but my own.
You made it; your get to put it out there. Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given.
Fear is a deeply ancient instinct, in other words, and an evolutionarily vital one... but it ain’t especially smart.
To know God, you need only to renounce one thing – your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.
I hope that your heart is strong within your grieving.
If you clear out all of that space in your mind you would have a door way.
War is a dreadful business, but it teaches everyone something; this particular war taught my Aunt Peg how to put on a show.
You didn’t show up ready enough, or fast enough, or openly enough for the idea to take hold within you and complete itself. Therefore, the idea went hunting for a new partner, and somebody else got to make the thing.
As Joan Didion said, “I don’t know what I think until I write about it.
I wrote that book anyhow, because I needed to write it for my own intimate purposes – and also because I was curious to see if I could convey my emotional experiences adequately on paper.
Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes – but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists often decide in advance that the end product is never going to be satisfactory, so they don’t even bother trying to be creative in the first place.
A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back.
Polly was the same age as Alma, but daintier and startlingly beautiful. She looked like a perfect figurine carved out of fine French soap, into which someone had inlaid a pair of glittering peacock-blue eyes. But it was the tiny pink pillow of her mouth that made this girl more than simply pretty; it made her an unsettling little voluptuary, a Bathsheba wrought in miniature.
He didn’t quit his day job to follow his dream; he just folded his dream into his everyday life.