collected wildness

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”

“Most people do not themselves know how interesting they really are, what interesting things they really say. A true representation of themselves — a sketch and assessment of what they say would evoke the greatest amazement in them about themselves and help them to discover in themselves a completely new world.”

“Part of grief’s tyranny is that it robs you of remembering the things that matter.”

“It does not matter whether I want to be changed, because I am changed.”

“All the chance events of our lives are materials from which we can make what we like. Whoever is rich in spirit makes much of his life. Every acquaintance, every incident would be for the thoroughly spiritual person the first element in an endless series — the beginning of an endless novel.”

And in the silence I suddenly understood the many ways a person can die but still be alive.

“Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.”

Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you're falling to the floor crying thinking, "I am falling to the floor crying," but there's an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you're on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn't paint it very well.

The sacred tree. In each forest there is always a tree that, you could say, occupies all of the space. A tree which shines brighter; one which, when you walk in the forest, you will see its soul.