“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” – Chuck Palahniuk
Quotes
Quotes that tickle my fancy for one reason or another.
A New Year’s Wish
"I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind." -Neil Gaiman (and me)
NaPoWriMo -Day #2
so, through our desolation,
thoughts stir, inspiration stalks us
through gloom -H.D.
Does hope really have feathers?
Or is it a green,
fresh thing
springing up
from the ground?
Or a tiny speck of light
like the occasional spot
that appears
in a photograph
invisible through the lens
but there, on the image
Or is hope a dark,
insubstantial thing
that follows
like a shadow,
stalking you
wherever you go
That movement
at the edge
of your vision
that feeling you get
sometimes
that you’re not alone
What is hope?
I don’t know, exactly
but I do know it’s there.
If you can’t find it just wait,
perhaps hope will find you
Rumi Quote
Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought
-Rumi
I really will post my own words here one day, soon. But until then I think these words are pretty cool. I hope you do too.
Happy New Year
“And I hope in the year to come you won’t burn. And I hope you won’t freeze. I hope you and your family will be safe, and walk freely in the world and that the place you live, if you have one, will be there when you get back. I hope that, for all of us, in the year ahead, kindness will prevail and that gentleness and humanity and forgiveness will be there for us if and when we need them.
And may your New Year be happy, and may you be happy in it. I hope you make something in the year to come you’ve always dreamed of making, and didn’t know if you could or not. But I bet you can. And I’m sure you will.”
-Neil Gaiman (and me)
Lists
“Because how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
– Annie Dillard
Every day I make a list
and methodically
go from the top down
completing and checking off
each item, each task
in turn.
And at the end of the day
I take my finished list
and throw it away.
And the next day
I make another.
But at the end
of my Big To Do List
with everything checked off,
completed,
I still don’t know
who I am
or why I am here.
Well, I’m not really at the end of my Big To Do List. At least hope not, though there is always the stray lightening bolt, or the unseen bus speeding around some corner. I’m hoping somewhere more in the middle, yet I think this still works.
He Said – She Said
“Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.”
― Neil Gaiman and me
Words for All Time
“And it means reasonable citizens must take action,” Connie continued. “We are not all thugs and villains. But we will become these, if we don’t try to make change.”
―
Wedding
My daughter married the man she loves on Saturday. I have a thousand thoughts and ten thousand emotions swirling inside me. And somehow, my words don’t work. But Neil Gaiman’s do. He wrote these for friends, on the occasion of their wedding and has generously given permission for others to use them. So, this is what the bride’s father read for his toast, and what I will share here.
This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing
This is everything I’ve learned about marriage: nothing
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.
It’s not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it’s what they mean.
Somebody’s got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn’t want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.
It’s not two broken halves becoming one.
It’s the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing
-like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else’s love, nobody else’s marriage, is like yours,
and it’s a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.
And that’s all I know about love.
-Neil Gaiman
Almost Autumn
“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.” ― Henry Beston
In Other Words 