other writing: not mine


A few of my favorite writings. These words have kept me company for a long time. Their authors' voices remind me that nearly everything I feel has been felt by someone else too, which is a great comfort to me. I'm starting with Annie Dillard because her voice resonates with me particularly powerfully. I'm sure I'll add more over time.

excerpt, pilgrim at tinker creek
The secret of seeing is, then, a pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever, I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.

excerpt, lady chatterly's lover
But he, the keeper, as the day grew, had realized: it's no good! It's no good trying to get rid of your aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your aloneness and stick to it all your life. An then, accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them. 

excerpt, the scarlet letter 
It contributes greatly toward a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go outside himself to appreciate.


excerpt, siddhartha
You are not strict with him, you do not punish him, you do not command him—because you  know that gentleness is stronger than severity, that water is stronger than rock, that love is stronger than force.


excerpt, plato's republic
Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderment of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees someone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. 


anthony caro
Courage and taste are the ingredients for making art. But good taste alone makes rapid art. More taste than courage may sometimes make good art, but it's art without adventurousness, without daring. Personally, I prefer art without a safety net.

agatha christie
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.


excerpt, coming back crazy
I live on the margin. None of this has anything to do with me. I will cultivate my garden here on the margin of everything and play Bach late into the night.

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