Am feeling quiet and contemplative tonight. Thinking about thanksgiving, and gratitude, and about rounding the curve to the end of another year. Thinking about those I love most and those whom I’m lucky to know love me, in all of my messy complexity.
She was so restless, liked so much to be alone. – Ellen Gilchrist, The Anna Papers
In the struggle lies the joy. – Maya Angelou
My life is like that – I don’t stop myself from going into the feeling, the emotion that pulls like gravity. Surely there are gentler courses, switchbacks, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to take them. – Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance
She could only stare at the absence inside herself for a few minutes at a time. It was like looking at the sun. – Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
I wanted to feel the sheerness of space, to somehow reach what was empty and quiet, to hold what was right beyond my grasp. – Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. – Adrienne Rich
Still, something deeply sad had been born buried in me, stirring occasionally inside like a creature moving in sleep. – Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital
It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. – William Carlos Williams
… in the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart. – Sigmund Freud