Holly > Holly's Quotes

“Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning
—three cheers for the ants.”
― Wislawa Szymborska

“Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still”
― Wislawa Szymborska

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“If you can finally go to the bathroom wherever you find one, if you can finally order a cup of coffee and drink it wherever coffee is available, but you cannot follow your heart-you cannot respect the response of your own honest body in the world-then how much of what kind of freedom does any one of us possess?
Or, conversely, if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force?”
― June Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays

“It would be something fine if we could learn how to bless the lives of children. They are the people of new life. Children are the only people nobody can blame. They are the only ones always willing to make a start; they have no choice. Children are the ways the world begin again and again.

"But in general, our children have no voice--that we will listen to. We force, we blank them into the bugle/bell regulated lineup of the Army/school, and we insist on silence.

"But even if we cannot learn to bless their lives (our future times), at least we can try to find out how we already curse and burden their experience: how we limit the wheeling of their inner eyes, how we terrify their trust, and how we condemn the raucous laughter of their natural love. What's more, if we will hear them, they will teach us what they need; they will bluntly formulate the tenderness of their deserving.”
― June Jordan

“And I got to thinking about the moral meaning of memory, per se. And what it means to forget, what it means to fail to find and preserve the connection with the dead whose lives you, or I, want or need to honor with our own.”
― June Jordan

“For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" (Plato)
The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration- how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“enjoy your problems”
― shunryu suzuki

“A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?"

Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki, Author of "ZEN Mind, Beginner's Mind"

“She looked at him. She thought that indeed he might love her, in some way. The love of one human being for another, which does not demand classification or mode.”
― Brad Watson, Miss Jane

“Without the spiritual component, the artist works with a crucial disadvantage. The spiritual world provides a sense of wonder and a degree of open-mindedness not always found within the confines of science. The world of reason can be narrow and filled with dead ends, while a spiritual viewpoint is limitless and invites fantastic possibilities. The unseen world is boundless.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“As artists, we seek to restore our childlike perception: a more innocent state of wonder and appreciation not tethered to utility or survival.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Think of the universe as an eternal creative unfolding.
Trees blossom.
Cells replicate.
Rivers forge new tributaries.
The world pulses with productive energy, and everything that exists on this planet is driven by that energy.
Every manifestation of this unfolding is doing its own work on behalf of the universe, each in its own way, true to its own creative impulse.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Oscar Wilde said that some things are too important to be taken seriously. Art is one of those things. Setting the bar low, especially to get started, frees you to play, explore, and test without attachment to results.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“The magic is not in the analyzing or the understanding. The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Art is choosing to do something skilfully,
caring about the details,
bringing all of yourself
to make the finest work you can.
It is beyond ego, vanity, self-glorfification,
and need for approval.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“There’s an abundant reservoir of high-quality information in our subconscious, and finding ways to access it can spark new material to draw from.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak with skillful care. The goal is to live your life in the service of art.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe. This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create from, but of the life we get to live.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“All art is a work in progress. It’s helpful to see the piece we’re working on as an experiment. One in which we can’t predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment. If you start from the position that there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and creativity is just free play with no rules, it’s easier to submerge yourself joyfully in the process of making things. We’re not playing to win, we’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process. To make and put out successive works with ease.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though persistence is key. It’s something you actively allow to happen. It is a presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening in the eternal now.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“When the gift moves in a circle its motion is beyond the control of the personal ego, and so each bearer must be a part of the group and each donation is an act of social faith.”
― Lewis Hyde, The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World

“YOU MUST NEVER SLEEP UNDER A MAGNOLIA

when the tree begins to flower
like a glimpse of

Flesh

when the flower begins to smell
as if its roots have reached

the layer of
Thirst upon the
unsealed jar of

Joy

Alice, you should
never sleep under
so much pure pale

so many shriek-mouthed blooms

as if Patience
had run out of

Patience”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“To be a poet, then, is no more or less than to be fully human and to translate and distill that experience into language so meticulously as to evoke and redeem something of life itself." from On the Edge of Motherhood and Poetics”
― Brit Washburn, Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose

“The meaning of a poem, like the meaning of a life, must be intrinsic to the nature of the thing, arising from within it, as opposed to imposed from without.”
― Brit Washburn, Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose

“... but poetry teaches us that, as with love and death, it is the devotion that lies within our power, now the object.”
― Brit Washburn, Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose