Marisa > Marisa's Quotes

“. . .To go as a river . .had taken me a long while to understand. . . meant. . .flowing forward against obstacle . . .like the river, I had also gathered along the way all the tiny pieces connecting me to everything else, and doing this had delivered me here, with two fists of forest soil in my palms and a heart still learning to be unafraid of itself. I had been shaped by my kindred— my lost family and lost love; my found friendships, though few; my trees that kept on living and every tree that gave me shelter; every creature I met along the way, every raindrop and snowflake choosing my shoulder, and every breeze that shifted the air; every winding path beneath my feet, every place I laid my hands and head, and every creek like the one before me, rolling off the hillside, gaining strength in gravity, spinning through the next eddy, pushing around the next bend, taking and giving in quiet agreement with every living thing.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“Try as we might to convince ourselves otherwise, the moments of our becoming cannot be carefully plucked like the ripest and most satisfying peach from the bough. In the endless stumble toward ourselves, we harvest the crop we are given.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“I learned from their subtle relations... that love is a private matter, to be nurtured, and even mourned, between two beings alone. It belongs to them, and no one else, like a secret treasure, like a private poem.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“There is a kind of sadness that transcends sadness, that runs like hot syrup into every crevice of your being, beginning in the heart then oozing into your very cells and bloodstream, so that nothing-not earth or sky or even your own palm ever looks the same. This is the sadness that changes everything.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“My days had not felt so expansive since that early summer in the mountain hut when I first learned to trust the hours instead of fill them.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“We are one and all alike if for no other reason than the excruciating and beautiful way we grow piece by unpredictable piece, falling, pushing from the debris, rising again, and hoping for the best.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“But I’ve come to understand how the exceptional lurks beneath the ordinary, like the deep and mysterious world beneath the surface of the sea.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“I’ll go as a river,” said Wil. “My grandfather always told me that it’s the only way.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“Loss has nothing to do with what you do deserve and don’t deserve.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“most good friends in that way, appreciative of our different qualities without being covetous.”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River