Children don’t have any honor, you see, and they aren’t expected to, because it’s too difficult for them. It’s too painful. But to become an adult, one must step into the field of honor. Everything will be expected of you now. You will need to be vigilant in your principles. Sacrifices will be demanded. You will be judged.
Lastly, she knew one other thing, and this was the most important realization of all: she knew that the world was plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died. This was a simple fact. This.
To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver.
If you do say yes to an idea, now it’s showtime.
I don’t sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things. Most of all, I keep working because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it.
The thing that you don’t understand about yourself, Vivian, is that you’re not an interesting person. You are pretty, yes – but that’s only because you are young. The prettiness will soon fade... What you are, Vivian, is a type of person. To be more specific, you are a type of woman. A tediously common type of woman.
I don’t think that marriage means to suffer endlessly, in order to prove that you can honor a commitment. I don’t think marriage is supposed to be an endurance contest.
Bravery means doing something scary. Fearlessness means not even understanding what the word scary means.
Most of my writing life consist of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done.
I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.
Inspiration is allowed to do whatever it wants to, in fact, and it is never obliged to justify its motives to any of us.
The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: “So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.” Perfectionism.
Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes – but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists.
Dar aici este diferenta dintre mintile noastre, draga mea. Eu vreau sa ajung la revelatie purtat de aripi, in timp ce tu inaintezi statornic pe jos, cu lupa in mana. Eu sunt un ratacitor nestatornic, il caut pe Dumnezeu in contururile mari, caut o cale noua de cunoastere. Tu stai cu picioarele pe pamant si masori dovezile palma cu palma. Calea ta e mai rationala si mai metodica, dar eu nu pot sa mi-o schimb pe a mea.
But it was pure, this love that I was feeling.
I work either way, you see – assisted or unassisted – because that is what you must do in order to live a fully creative life. I work steadily, and I always thank the process. Whether I am touched by grace or not, I thank creativity for allowing me to engage with it at all.
And this commitment of ours – consciously devoid of official commitment – felt miraculous in its liberation.
Even if my acquaintance at the publishing party was certain that she herself would never abandon her husband, the question was not entirely up to her. She was not the only person in that bed. All lovers, even the most faithful lovers, are vulnerable to abandonment against their will.
Those girls are on the road to trouble,” I heard an older woman say about us one night, as we were staggering down the street drunk – and that woman was absolutely right. What she didn’t understand, though, is that trouble is what we wanted.
And what are your duties at the theater?” “To catch things that are falling through midair, right before they hit the ground and shatter.