Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
Silence was the cure, if only temporarily, silence and geography. But of what was I being cured? I do not know, have never known. I only know the cure. Silence, and no connections except to landscape.
MARY CANTWELL
Manhattan, When I Was Young
There is a joy in the pursuit of anything.
ROBERT HENRI
The Art Spirit
To change fate, you do not choose small steps.
AMY TAN
“How to Change Fate: Step 1,” in Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir
So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To The Lighthouse
I had spent my whole life trying to fit in, but it would take the rest of my life to realize that some men are just meant to stand out.
CHARLES M. BLOW
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
It may well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Painting as a Pastime
Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived.
HELEN KELLER
The World I Live In
At a certain point one stands on the isthmus and sees clearly the Atlantic and Pacific of life. There is the destiny of going one way or the other and you must choose.
JAMES SALTER
Burning the Days
Sartaj was thinking about how uncanny an animal this life was, that you had to seize it and let go of it at the same time, that you had to enjoy but also plan, live every minute and die every moment.
VIKRAM CHANDRA
Sacred Games
I shall never forget how the red ball of the sun hung on the horizon and raced along with the train for a short space, and then plunged below the belly-band of the earth. There have been other suns that set in significance for me, but that sun! It was a book-mark in the pages of a life.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Dust Tracks on a Road
If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Stranger
One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light.
JAMES BALDWIN
Nothing Personal
The clearest indication of character is what people find laughable.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Maxims and Reflections
Humor is the antidote to overthinking. It’s a way of saying that life is paradoxical. Humor contains contradictions; it does not resolve them but revels in them. It says that the right way to exist among the contradictions, paradoxes, and absurdities of life is to cope with them through laughter.
BOB MANKOFF
How About Never: Is Never Good For You?