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This is my current recommendation for a book. It took me forever to get through because my life is hectic, but I loved it and tell everyone to read it. Some of my favorite quotes/sections:
(i realized when i was done with this post that it is REALLY long, but I love every quote and it is really sort of a log for me because I am going to give the book away so someone else can learn and grow from it. So, feel free to ignore this post or scroll back for less challenging words.)
p. 57
We just learned the other day that un'amica stretta means "a close friend" (in Italian). But stretta literally means tight, as in clothing, like a tight skirt. So, a close friend in Italian is one that you can wear tightly against your skin.
p. 47
They they (Loneliness and Depression) frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that. Then loneliness starts interrogating me, which I dread because it always goes on for hours. He's polite but relentless and always trips me up eventually. .... I walk back home trying to shake them, but they keep following me, those two goons. Depression has a firm handle on my shoulder and loneliness harangues me with interrogation. Depression, he's got a billy club, so there's no stopping him from coming in if he decides that he wants to.
p. 86
I collapse into tears. I mean wailing -- I mean that terrible ragged breed of bawling my friend Sally calls "double pumpin it" when you have to inhale two desperate gasps of oxygen with every sob. I choke forth an apology for being such a mess. ... He says "Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots."
p. 90
A family in my sister's neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tradgedy, when both a young mother and her three year old were stricken with cancer. When she told me about this, all I could say was "dear God this family needs grace." She replied firmly, "that family needs casseroles," and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into dinner shifts for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace.
p. 95
Virginia Woof wrote "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of the sword." on one side of that sword there lies convention and tradition and order where "all is correct." But on the other side of that sword, if you are crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course." Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but it will also be more perilous.
p. 132
like most humanoids, I am burdened with what Buddhists call "monkey mind" -- the thoughts swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas per minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily the problem, the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy and then whoop! how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then there's the remembrance of the angry moment and then I get hot and pissed off all over again....
p. 175
The search for God is the reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In the search for God you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you've given up. ...We all agree it would be easier to sleep in, and many of us do, but for millenia there have been others who choose instead to get up before the sun and wash their faces and go to their prayers. And then try fiercely to hold on to their devotional convictions throughout the lunacy of another day.
The devout of this world perform their rituals without guarantee that anything good will ever come of it. ..... but even to believe all of this is an act of faith, because nobody amongst us is shown the endgame. Devotion is diligence without assurance.
p. 329
The Zen Buddhists believe that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously there is an acorn from which it all begins, the seed which grows into the tree. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well-- the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness into maturity. I think about this woman I have become and how much I always wanted to be this person and live this life, liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself. I think of everything I have endured before getting here and wonder if it was me who pulled the other younger, struggling me forward during all those hard years.
