Great Throughts Treasury

"The review in the newspaper the next day was not very good. But by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier. One of the things I'd been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I could ride it...Out of nowhere, I remembered something one of my priest friends had said once, that grace is having a commitment to - or at least an acceptance of - being ineffective and foolish. That our bottled charm is the main roadblock to drinking that clear, cool glass of love. I remembered what Grace's stories were all about: self-forgiveness, and taking care of one another. It wasn't far away from Jesus saying to feed his sheep. Now, I'm not positive he meant room service. But maybe he did. So I ate strawberries and melon and cookies, then put on the heat, and got in the tub."

"The search for meaning will fill you with a sense of meaning. Otherwise"

"The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines."

"The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are."

"The single most radical thing I know . . . is that I get to take care of myself."

"The speaker at the meeting, a blonde woman in a fine tailored suit, shared how alcoholism had stolen her own childhood, and had now come back for her child."

"The thing about light is that it really isn?t yours; it?s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself."

"The trees are so huge that they shut you up."

"The three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you."

"The truth is that your spirits don't rise until you get way down."

"The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out."

"The welcome book would have taught us that power and signs of status can?t save us, that welcome?both offering and receiving?is our source of safety. Various chapters and verses of this book would remind us that we are wanted and even occasionally delighted in, despite the unfortunate truth that we are greedy-grabby, self-referential, indulgent, overly judgmental, and often hysterical. Somehow that book went missing. Or when the editorial board of bishops pored over the canonical lists from Jerusalem and Alexandria, they arbitrarily nixed the book that states unequivocally that you are wanted, even rejoiced in."

"The way I dance is by writing."

"The way I see things, God loves you the same whether you're being elegant or not. It feels much better when you are, but even when you can't fake it, God still listens to your prayers. Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, 'Well isn't that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I'll figure out what we're going to do about your stuff."

"Then it came to me: I was asking the wrong question. The right one is: Where is God in gang warfare? And the answer is, The same place God is in Darfur, and in our alcoholism, and when children are bullied: being crucified."

"Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food."

"The worst possible thing you can do when you?re down in the dumps, tweaking, vaporous with victimized self-righteousness, or bored, is to take a walk with dying friends. They will ruin everything for you. First of all, friends like this may not even think of themselves as dying, although they clearly are, according to recent scans and gentle doctors? reports. But no, they see themselves as fully alive. They are living and doing as much as they can, as well as they can, for as long as they can. They ruin your multitasking high, the bath of agitation, rumination, and judgment you wallow in, without the decency to come out and just say anything. They bust you by being grateful for the day, while you are obsessed with how thin your lashes have become and how wide your bottom."

"The whole game in the fifties and early sixties was for no one to know who you really were. We children were witness to the total pretense of how our parents wanted the world to see them. We helped them maintain this image, because if anyone outside the family could see who they really were deep down, the whole system, the ship of your family, might sink. We held our breath to give the ship buoyancy. We were little air tanks."

"The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts."

"The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just any words, but, if you can, into rhythm and blues."

"There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock."

"There are moments when I am writing when I think that if other people knew how I felt right now, they?d burn me at the stake for feeling so good, so full, so much intense pleasure."

"There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal."

"There are really places in your heart that you don't know exist until you love a child."

"There are times in our lives ? scary, unsettling times ? when we know that we need help or answers but we?re not sure what kind, or even what the problem or question is. We look and look, tearing apart our lives like we?re searching for car keys in our couch, and we come up empty-handed. Then when we?re doing something stupid, like staring at the dog?s mismatched paws, we stumble across what we needed to find. Or even better, it finds us. It wasn?t what we were looking or hoping for, which was usually advice, approval, an advantage, safety, or relief from pain. I was raised to seek or achieve them, but like everyone, I realized at some point that they do not bring lasting peace, relief, or uplift. This does not seem fair, after a lifetime spent in their pursuit."

"There is cracks, cracks, in everything, that's how the light gets in.' I had cracks but not the hope."

"There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk."

"There is so much mercy around us and in us, so much available to us if we just have the eyes and intention to see it."

"There is something so tender about this to me, about being willing to have your makeup wash off, your eyes tear up, your nose start to run. Its tender partly because it harkens back to infancy, to your mother washing your face with love and lots or water, tending to you, making you clean all over again."

"There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are."

"There is ecstasy in paying attention... Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart, and can try to capture just that - the details, the nuance, what is. If you start to look around, you will start to see."

"There?s freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won?t be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you?ve reached the place of great unknowing. This is where restoration can begin, because when you?re still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged: the chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the trunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past. It?s exhausting, crazy-making."

"There should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance."

"There really is only today, although luckily that is also the eternal now."

"There was going to be a spot for me in this joint, the earth, after all. It was never going to be a great match for someone as bright and strange as me, but books were going to make it survivable."

"There?s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we?re going to die; what?s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this."

"These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition."

"There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, Why on our hearts, and not in them? The rabbi answered, Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside."

"These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced."

"They always threw their arms around and hugged me while crying our Yiddish endearments. Yet none of them believed in God. They believed in social justice, good works, Israel, and Bette Midler. I was nearly thirty before I met a religious Jew."

"These lines of D.H. Lawrence are taped to the wall of my office: ?What is the knocking? What is the knocking at the door in the night? It is somebody wants to do us harm. No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.? I understand that failure is surely one of these strange angels."

"These two things are almost all I want, but unfortunately, neither one is my strong suit. I am very strong on blame, and wish this were one of God's values, but trust, surrender? Letting go, forgiveness? Maybe just after a period of prayer, but then when the mood passes and real life rears its ugly head again? Not so much. I hate this, the fact that life is usually Chutes and Ladders, with no guaranteed gains. I cannot will myself into having these qualities, so I have to pray for them more often, if I want to be happy. I have to create the habit, just as I had to do with daily writing, and flossing."

"They cramp around our wounds?the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both?to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases we don?t even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us."

"they seemed to read all the papers the school sent home, which I think is actually a little show-offy."

"They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You?ll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them."

"They say we are punished not for the sin but by the sin, and I began to feel punished by my unwillingness to forgive."

"They taught me that being of service, an ally to the lonely and suffering, a big-girl helper to underdogs, was my best shot at happiness. They taught me that most of my good ideas were not helpful, and that all of my ideas after ten p.m. were especially unhelpful. They taught me to pay attention, but not so much attention to my tiny princess mind."

"Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what he thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what his painting isn't, until finally he finds out what it is."

"They taught me to pay attention, but not so much attention to my tiny princess mind."

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."