Favorite Quotes for Spring,2009
"Literature is mainly a matter of carpentry." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez as heard on NPR
". . .categories of 'liberal' and 'conservative' are alien to Christianity or any other religious tradition."
- Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith
From "Not Necessarily at Rest," Lance Larsen (from Backyard Alchemy)
How can those who watch us
not be moved
by our puny tries at beauty---
the gods who look down, the dead
who sometimes look up? Yearning works
through us, whiskers to tail, the way
a yawning cat converts stretching
into praise.
A justification for the condition of schizophrenia: “How can so much talent be contained in only one personality?” - from a conversation with Christopher Jon Barber
“First I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.” - C. Day Lewis
"Fame is like a braided coat, which hampers the limbs; a jacket of silver which curbs the heart; a painted shield which covers a scarecrow...while fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. ...he alone is free; he alone is truthful; he alone is at peace...being like a wave which returns to the deep body of the sea; thinking how obscurity rids the mind of the irk and envy and spite; how it sets running in the veins the free waters of generosity and magnanimity; and allows giving and taking with thanks offered or praise given; which must have been the way of all great poets. . .needing no thanking or naming, but only their work in the daytime and a little ale perhaps at night.” - Virginia Woolf from Orlando
“No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.” - James Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”
Ether 12:27 (The Book of Mormon): "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."