Phibby Venable > Phibby's Quotes

“I've always thought people would find a lot more pleasure in their routines if they burst into song at significant moments.”
― John Barrowman

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“An Afternoon in the Stacks

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.”
― William Edgar Stafford, The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

“now there is an aura of regret in the eyes of the bird
through the stiffened point of pain it stares at dawn
who will notice in the wild concert
if one bird fails to sing”
― Phibby Venable, Blue Cold Morning

“When the music note grows tired
we will land on the wings of a guardian -
One already accustomed to my attempts to fly
One aware of my weakness for a beautiful try”
― Phibby Venable

“I will sing in this tree until the stars alert the moon

and the moon will turn a big head to listen

While one lone woman in another town,

will smile in her sleep to the familiar sound

Someone I will not know will hear my singing

and play the blues on a horn of long rapture

and a laughing man traveling with his window down,

will whisper, Yes, oh yes indeed!

I will sing in this tree.”
― Phibby Venable, My Life On Little River

“I was having trouble sleeping. This is not an uncommon thing, but because it eluded me so often, I had a passion for sleep. I had rituals that I rendered unto sleep, as though serving a goddess. White noise was key to the equation. I had a fan in the bedroom that rivaled a freight train in sound. I scented the sheets with sunflower spray, and kept an electric blanket on low for warmth. Surely sleep would be enticed.”
― Phibby Venable, Women of the Round Table

“Every day you play with the light of the universe.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“The world is its own magic.”
― Shunryu Suzuki

“Remarks on My Character

Waving a flag I retreat a long way beyond
any denial, all the way over the scorched earth,
and come into an arching grove of evasions,
onto those easy paths, one leading to another
and covered ever deeper with shade: I'll never
dare the sun again, that I can promise.

It is time to practice the shrug: "Don't count on
me." Or practice the question that drags its broken
wing over the ground and leads into the swamp
where vines trip anyone in a hurry, and a final
dark pool waits for you to stare at yourself
while shadows move closer over your shoulder.

That's my natural place; I can live where the blurred
faces peer back at me. I like the way
they blend, and no one is ever sure itself
or likely to settle in unless you scare off
the others. Afraid but so deep no one can follow,
I steal away there, holding my arms like a tree.”
― William Stafford

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”
― Walt Whitman

“The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.”
― Olivia Howard Dunbar, The Shell of Sense

“Be aware of the high notes, of the blissful faces and their soft messages, and listen for the silent message of a highly decorated gift.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“The biggest spur to my interest in art came when I played van Gogh in the biographical film Lust For Life. The role affected me deeply. I was haunted by this talented genius who took his own life, thinking he was a failure. How terrible to paint pictures and feel that no one wants them. How awful it would be to write music that no one wants to hear. Books that no one wants to read. And how would you like to be an actor with no part to play, and no audience to watch you. Poor Vincent—he wrestled with his soul in the wheat field of Auvers-sur-Oise, stacks of his unsold paintings collecting dust in his brother's house. It was all too much for him, and he pulled the trigger and ended it all. My heart ached for van Gogh the afternoon that I played that scene. As I write this, I look up at a poster of his "Irises"—a poster from the Getty Museum. It's a beautiful piece of art with one white iris sticking up among a field of blue ones. They paid a fortune for it, reportedly $53 million. And poor Vincent, in his lifetime, sold only one painting for 400 francs or $80 dollars today. This is what stimulated my interest in buying works of art from living artists. I want them to know while they are alive that I enjoy their paintings hanging on my walls, or their sculptures decorating my garden”
― Kirk Douglas, Climbing The Mountain: My Search For Meaning

“There was something frantic in their blooming, as if they knew that frost was near and then the bitter cold. They'd lived through all the heat and noise and stench of summertime, and now each widely opened flower was like a triumphant cry, "We will, we will make seed before we die.”
― Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Weedkiller's Daughter

“If a religion is unpatriotic, it ain't right.”
― Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker

“What was the good of trying to keep your own (children) if when they grew up their days were like your own- changeovers and ugly painted dolls?”
― Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker

“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications.”
― Nora Ephron

“No, I thank you; I have had an elegant sufficiency of the numerous delicacies. Any more would be an unsophisticated superfluity, for gastronomic satiety admonishes me that I have reached the ultimate stage of deglutition consistent with dietetic integrity. ”
― Fred Chappell, I Am One of You Forever

“...I owed her a debt of gratitude. More than gratitude, much more.
I could finally see what had always been there. She had been more than an attendant, more than a friend, more than a sister. She had been a mother to me. She had worried, sought to protect me from danger, guided me toward the best. She had looked out for my future, assessed the worthiness of everyone to be in my life. And in that way, she had taken me as her purpose in life, the one who gave her meaning. I had a constant love all along. And in recognizing that, I felt moved to tears.
"How could you step out of my life?" I told her. "if you do don't join me, I will be lost. No one would worry about me as much as you. No one knows me better, knows my past and what this new life means. I should have told you a long time ago." I became teary-eyed. She kept her lips sealed, but her jaw was trembling. "You are the only loyal person in my life, the only one I can trust."
Tears fell from her eyes. "Now you know. I was always the only one."
"We love each other," I said with a light laugh. "In spite of all the trouble I've given you, you stayed with me. So it must be that you loved me like a mother.”
― Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“Multiplying my age by 2 in my head/I'm a grandfather. Or Dead.”
― Fred Chappell, River: A Poem

“One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled,
stooped to pull harder-
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished. No one had heard her.
No one! She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers. Stick
with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.”
― Rita Dove "Persephone Falling"