“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will
be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over
the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live
forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come
through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that
still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the
limp.”
―
―
“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
―
―
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on
earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid
squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing
to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who
we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and
friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
―
―
“Joy is the best makeup.”
― Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
― Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the
people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is
the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think
perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully
enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die.
The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who
aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better
than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably
broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might
eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and
rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted
to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself,
eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If
people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved
better.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
―
―
“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
―
―
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen
and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers
make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their
truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is
restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping
along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over
and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at
sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts
and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”
―
―
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”
― Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
― Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious
life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to
look good and creating the illusion that you have power over
circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find
out the truth about who you are.”
―
―
“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like
driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but
you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where
you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you
will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of
you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I
have ever heard.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out
loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the
cat dish.”
―
―
“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand
castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your
imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories;
these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part
of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have
lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the
sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the
ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief,
deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow
the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of
person to be.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.”
― Joe Jones
― Joe Jones
“I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in
the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.”
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to
believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit
anyone can throw at us.”
― Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
― Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
― Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
― Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”
―
―
“Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness
makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism
is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true
friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was
that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we
are here.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“No" is a complete sentence.”
―
―
“It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.”
― Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
― Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
“It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had
some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment,
the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up
I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships,
prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these,
they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”
― Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
― Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path.
We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by
the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much
baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have
time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be
right.”
―
―
“I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no
real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had
told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.
Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the
mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some
light returns.”
― Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
― Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it
interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing
real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the
emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being
unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you
have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth
is always subversive.”
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
― Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
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