I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.
if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.
We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet
Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, like a fire subsiding. . . . Just this once I wanted to let it rip.
What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.
Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read.
I wasn't truly comfortable with myself until I was about 30. I spent so much time and energy wondering if I wasn't worthy, and trying to find people to validate me, instead of validating myself.
The left, if you get them honest, will admit they know they're a minority.
There are no hard times for good ideas.
Go to the adolescent who are smothered in family-- Oh how hideous it is To see three generations of one house gathered together! It is like an old tree with shoots, And with some branches rotted and falling.