quotes by Kathleen Norris

"Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine."
— Kathleen Norris

"If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change."
— Kathleen Norris

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."
— Kathleen Norris

"Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings."
— Kathleen Norris (The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work")

"The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances."
— Kathleen Norris

"In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular."
— Kathleen Norris (Dakota: A Spiritual Geography)

"I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?"
— Kathleen Norris (The Psalms)

"Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future."
— Kathleen Norris

"Good storytelling is one thing rural whites and Indians have in common. But native Americans have learned through harsh necessity that people who survive encroachment by another culture need story to survive. And a storytelling tradition is something Plains people share with both ancient and contemporary monks; we learn our ways of being and reinforce our values by telling tales about each other."
— Kathleen Norris (Dakota: A Spiritual Geography)

"None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives."
— Kathleen Norris

"Only Christ could have brought us all together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things."
— Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk)

"I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them."
— Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk)

"My goal is to allow readers their own experience of whatever discovery I have made, so that it feels new to them, but also familiar, in that it is a piece with their own experience. It is a form of serious play."
— Kathleen Norris (The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work")

"I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change."
— Kathleen Norris (Dakota: A Spiritual Geography)

"All of cleanliness is neither embraced nor denied by the taking of cold baths."
— Kathleen Norris (Saturday's Child)

"And a lot he knows about office work, not."
— Kathleen Norris (Saturday's Child)

"Well, they tell us meat isn't good for us anyway!"
— Kathleen Norris (Saturday's Child)

"It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?"
— Kathleen Norris (Saturday's Child)

"Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the secret."
— Kathleen Norris (Saturday's Child)

"One of the advantages of laws is that you can follow them blind, when you have lost all your moorings. You can't follow your instincts, but you can remember your rule."
— Kathleen Norris (Saturday's Child)

"Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier."
— Kathleen Norris

"This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship."
— Kathleen Norris (Amazing Grace)

"‘Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.’
"
— Kathleen Norris