Miriam Hall > Miriam's Quotes

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“How do you talk to the real person whose ghost has haunted you? How do you tell the difference between the two?”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Love Sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“our best selves and our worst selves and our myriad iterations of mediocre selves are all extant simultaneously within a soul containing multitudes. In any case, I noticed the way the nurses pressed their lips into a thin line whenever they heard my mother speak of my father’s supposed kindnesses. I loved my mother, but I”
― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons