E. Michael Murphy > E. Michael's Quotes

“If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Cosmopolitan Greetings

“The novelist Thomas Wolfe, recalling a lifelong struggle with illness, wrote in his last letter, “I’ve made a long voyage and been to a strange country, and I’ve seen the dark man very close.” I had not made the journey myself, and I had only seen the darkness reflected in the eyes of others. But surely, it was the most sublime moment of my clinical life to have watched that voyage in reverse, to encounter men and women returning from the strange country—to see them so very close, clambering back.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Your next step is simple. You are the first domino.”
― Gary Keller, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

“The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.”
― Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

“The sad quiet grey-blue glow of the dying day came through the window and the open door, covering over and allaying quietly a sudden instinct of remorse in Stephen's heart.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Do you feel how profound that is because you are a poet?”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Stephen looked coldly on the oblong skull beneath him overgrown with tangled twine-coloured hair.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man