Laurel > Laurel's Quotes

“Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I know the two great commandments, and I'd better get on with them.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, 'I am at peace with God.' She smiled, but not at me. Poi si torno all' eterna fontana.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“My idea of God is a not divine idea. It has to be shattered from time to time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?..”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job--where the machine seems to run on much as usual--I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Suppose that the earthly lives she and I shared for a few years are in reality only the basis for, or prelude to, or earthly appearance of, two unimaginable, supercosmic, eternal somethings.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as ‘feminine.”
― C.S. Lewis

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“The death of a beloved is an amputation.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious and compassionate will save your ass. Being curious and compassionate can take you out of your ego and edge your soul towards wonder.”
― Mary Karr, Now Go Out There

“Bad things are gonna' happen to you, because they happen to us all. And worrying won't stave the really bad things off. Don't make the mistake of comparing your twisted-up insides to other people's blow-dried outsides. Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human.”
― Mary Karr, Now Go Out There

“Sometimes all we have is the knowledge that something extraordinary exists in the universe, even if we can't be the ones to claim it. Sometimes that has to be enough.”
― Sarvenaz Tash, The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love

“And I think about all the things we could be
if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

“Late into the night I write and the pages of my notebook swell from all the words I’ve pressed onto them.
It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

“After It happens when I’m at bodegas. It happens when I’m at school. It happens when I’m on the train. It happens when I’m standing on the platform. It happens when I’m sitting on the stoop. It happens when I’m turning the corner. It happens when I forget to be on guard. It happens all the time. I should be used to it. I shouldn’t get so angry when boys—and sometimes grown-ass men— talk to me however they want, think they can grab themselves or rub against me or make all kinds of offers. But I’m never used to it. And it always makes my hands shake. Always makes my throat tight. The only thing that calms me down after Twin and I get home is to put my headphones on. To listen to Drake. To grab my notebook, and write, and write, and write all the things I wish I could have said. Make poems from the sharp feelings inside, that feel like they could carve me wide open. It happens when I wear shorts. It happens when I wear jeans. It happens when I stare at the ground. It happens when I stare ahead. It happens when I’m walking. It happens when I’m sitting. It happens when I’m on my phone. It simply never stops.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

“We're different, this poet and I. In looks, in body,
in background. But I don't feel so different
when I listen to her. I feel heard.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X