Rebecca > Rebecca's Quotes

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of all the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.”
― Giorgos Seferis

“BOWLS OF FOOD
Moon and evening star do their
slow tambourine dance to praise
this universe. The purpose of
every gathering is discovered:
to recognize beauty and love
what’s beautiful. “Once it was
like that, now it’s like this,”
the saying goes around town, and
serious consequences too. Men
and women turn their faces to the
wall in grief. They lose appetite.
Then they start eating the fire of
pleasure, as camels chew pungent
grass for the sake of their souls.
Winter blocks the road. Flowers
are taken prisoner underground.
Then green justice tenders a spear.
Go outside to the orchard. These
visitors came a long way, past all
the houses of the zodiac, learning
Something new at each stop. And
they’re here for such a short time,
sitting at these tables set on the
prow of the wind. Bowls of food
are brought out as answers, but
still no one knows the answer.

Food for the soul stays secret.
Body food gets put out in the open

like us. Those who work at a bakery
don’t know the taste of bread like

the hungry beggars do. Because the
beloved wants to know, unseen things

become manifest. Hiding is the
hidden purpose of creation: bury

your seed and wait. After you die,
All the thoughts you had will throng

around like children. The heart
is the secret inside the secret.

Call the secret language, and never
be sure what you conceal. It’s

unsure people who get the blessing.
Climbing cypress, opening rose,

Nightingale song, fruit, these are
inside the chill November wind.

They are its secret. We climb and
fall so often. Plants have an inner
Being, and separate ways of talking
and feeling. An ear of corn bends

in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed.
Pink rose deciding to open a

competing store. A bunch of grapes
sits with its feet stuck out.

Narcissus gossiping about iris.
Willow, what do you learn from running

water? Humility. Red apple, what has
the Friend taught you? To be sour.

Peach tree, why so low? To let you
reach. Look at the poplar, tall but

without fruit or flower. Yes, if
I had those, I’d be self-absorbed

like you. I gave up self to watch
the enlightened ones. Pomegranate

questions quince, Why so pale? For
the pearl you hid inside me. How did

you discover my secret? Your laugh.
The core of the seen and unseen

universes smiles, but remember,
smiles come best from those who weep.

Lightning, then the rain-laughter.
Dark earth receives that clear and
grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber
come dragging along on pilgrimage.

You have to be to be blessed!
Pumpkin begins climbing a rope!

Where did he learn that? Grass,
thorns, a hundred thousand ants and

snakes, everything is looking for
food. Don’t you hear the noise?

Every herb cures some illness.
Camels delight to eat thorns. We

prefer the inside of a walnut, not
the shell. The inside of an egg,

the outside of a date. What about
your inside and outside? The same

way a branch draws water up many
feet, God is pulling your soul

along. Wind carries pollen from
blossom to ground. Wings and

Arabian stallions gallop toward
the warmth of spring. They visit;

they sing and tell what they think
they know: so-and-so will travel

to such-and-such. The hoopoe
carries a letter to Solomon. The

wise stork says lek-lek. Please
translate. It’s time to go to

the high plain, to leave the winter
house. Be your own watchman as

birds are. Let the remembering
beads encircle you. I make promises

to myself and break them. Words are
coins: the vein of ore and the

mine shaft, what they speak of. Now
consider the sun. It’s neither

oriental nor occidental. Only the
soul knows what love is. This

moment in time and space is an
eggshell with an embryo crumpled

inside, soaked in belief-yolk,
under the wing of grace, until it

breaks free of mind to become the
song of an actual bird, and God.”
― Rumi, The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems

“There is dew
on these poems in the morning,
and at night a cool breeze may rise from them.

In the winter they are blankets, in the summer a place to swim.

I like talking to you like this. Have you moved
a step closer?

Soon we may be
kissing.”
― Kabir

“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”
― Kabir

“...But if a mirror ever makes
you sad

you should know
that it does
not know
you.”
― Kabir

“Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.”
― Kabir, The Bijak of Kabir

“Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.”
― Kabir

“If you want the truth,
I’ll tell you the truth:
Listen to the secret sound,
the real sound,
which is inside you.”
― Kabir

“The river that flows in you also flows in me.”
― Kabir

“Wherever you are is the entry point”
― Kabir

“I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves
birds and animals and the ants--
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you
in your mother's womb.
Is it logical you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten
what you once knew,
and that's why everything you do has some weird sense of failure in it.”
― Kabir

“the sun is within me and so is the moon”
― Kabir

“The Lord is in me, the Lord is in you,as life is in every seed, put false pride away and seek the Lord within..”
― Kabir

“I don't think there is such a thing as
an intelligent mega-rich
person.

For who with a fine mind can look
out upon this world and
hoard

what can nourish
a thousand
souls.”
― Kabir

“Listen, my friend. He who loves understands.”
― Kabir

“It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they
swing between the arms of the Secret One you love,
Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes,
and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of night.
Bring your face up close to his ear,
and then talk only about what you want deeply to happen.”
― Kabir, The Kabir Book: Forty-four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir

“Slowly slowly O mind...
Everything in own pace happens,
Gardner may water a hundred buckets...
Fruit arrives only in its season.”
― Kabir