Karen Maezen Miller

These quotes are from Hand Wash Cold by Karen Maezen Miller

When we think we know someone, you see, we are already halfway to disappointment. . .

We can only love the world we wake up to. The world where things change, dishes get dirty, we age, we get sick and one day, we die.

There's an urgent truth to life, and yet most of us spend every moment trying to hide from it.

Someone has to make a change for good, and that someone can only be you.

If you tell me that you don't have one hour a day to spend in undistracted company with your children or your partner, I'll say it's about time. It's always about time.

One night the moon was full and I lay awake for a long while. I went into my daughter's bedroom and watched her sleep. I saw through the deep shadows and the midnight glow. She did not stir.

I went because the nights are numbered and I do not know the count.

Days and nights come and go without end, appearing and disappearing into thin air. Notice, and you'll always know what time it is. You'll always know what to do.

When I grow weary of what's undone or anxious about what's to come, I remind myself that I am not the maker or the order-taker in this life. I am this life, and it is unfinished. Even when it is finished it will be unfinished. And so I take my sweet time. Time is savored when you take it by the hand.

I've learned that it takes a mother to heal a daughter, a daughter to heal a father, and a dog to heal us all.

We have a saying in Zen: "When an object can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way." There is no one left to take offense. There is only one love, the love that never leaves.

Life is suffering. No one can make less of it. Pain finds us without fail. Hearts break; dreams die; hatred flourishes; sickness prevails; people and promises leave without a trace.

We must finally see that the light we seek streams from our very own eyes and always has.

Fulfillment derives not from lofty achievements, but from ordinary feats. It arrives not once in a lifetime, but every moment of the livelong day.