Tom > Tom's Quotes

“I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,

not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:

you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.

Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth–

Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.

Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.”
― Louise Glück, The Seven Ages: Bold and Masterful Poems on Death, Metamorphosis, and Embracing the Inevitable

“True faith is not hard at all. It is soft in its resilience, yielding in its certitude — the vehicle for absolute grace.”
― Karen Maezen Miller, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life

“gesture a lot and look wild-eyed and generally pissed-off in some broad geopolitical way.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Your silence will not protect you.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“Revolution is not a one time event.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“Looking for goshawks is like looking for grace: it comes, but not often, and you don’t get to say when or how.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“Like a good academic, I thought books were for answers.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“As so often happens in politics, what appears to be politically expedient for those in power rarely overlaps with the public interest. The lesser evils of the regime become entrenched, while the greater good is never realized.”
― Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

“A mountain had died, its skeleton had been scattered over the ground. Time had aged the mountain; time had killed the mountain-and here lay the mountain's bones.”
― Vasily Grossman, An Armenian Sketchbook

“I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never by conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“I don't believe in your "Good". I believe in human kindness.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Work isn't meaningful just because you spend your life doing it.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“As I often tell my students, the two most important phrases in therapy, as in yoga, are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“A broken heart can masquerade as a cold one.”
― Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade

“Salvation comes through repetition. This I can do because I have done it before—it's half prayer, half truth, a whisper in a hurricane of self-doubt.”
― Kevin Hazzard, A Thousand Naked Strangers: a Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back

“Some people never really talk about anything—they just repeat the same old sentence from time to time.”
― Rafik Schami

“Life always gives us
exactly the teacher we need
at every moment.
This includes every mosquito,
every misfortune,
every red light,
every traffic jam,
every obnoxious supervisor (or employee),
every illness, every loss,
every moment of joy or depression,
every addiction,
every piece of garbage,
every breath.

Every moment is the guru.”
― Charlotte Joko Beck

“Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.”
― Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special: A Zen Buddhist Guide to Awakening Through Daily Life's Feelings, Relationships, and Work

“History is like a jungle, and no clearing that one cuts into it opens up the whole forest.”
― Sebastian Haffner

“When things are good, you can see no other way of living; when things are in ruins, there appear a million solutions for how this fate could have been avoided.”
― Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs

“redefine your goal, so that it’s not to pursue justice or punish unfairness but to accept the unfairness of the world, bear the humiliation and helplessness that go with it, and then seek to do the most good.”
― Michael Bennett, F*ck Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems

“I know there is never only one version of the past. We resurrect the past to suit the needs of the present.”
― Sari Wilson, Girl Through Glass

“The accidents of history are everywhere. The carnage all around us.”
― Sari Wilson, Girl Through Glass

“If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you're setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time.”
― Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

“In any field, it’s a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack.”
― Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

“Books are what save us. Books are what don't save us.”
― Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows

“In the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil