Taylor > Taylor's Quotes

“Carve out the time. Notice I do not say find the time. That is an absurd and dangerous phrase. Time is never lying around waiting for us to find her. She is elusive. She wants you to sculpt her like clay, to mold her into exactly the form you desire your days to take. If you refuse to do that, if you spend your mornings worrying and your afternoons catering to others, always hoping there will be a few minutes left for you, time will play you like a sucker, making you run harder and faster with each passing week. Time wants you to realize that she is the most precious and irreducible fact in your live. Make her into what you will”
― Jennifer Louden

“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
― Gaston Bachelard , The Poetics of Space

“Fast-food outlets are cultural institutions dedicated not only to dealing with mankind's compulsion to eat and drink regularly, but also to doing battle with his twin and fatal limitations of space and time.”
― Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“When someone works for less pay than she can live on -- when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently -- than she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made of a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

“There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“It's not what enters men's mouth that is evil," said the alchemist. "It's what comes out of their mouths that is.”
― Paulo Coelho , The Alchemist

“When you're washing up, pray. Be thankful that there are plates to be washed; that means there was food, that you fed someone, that you're lavished care on one or more people, that you cooked and laid the table. ...
There are women who say: "I'm not going to do the washing up let the men do it." Fine, let the men do it if they want to, but that has nothing to do with equality ... I'd be accused of working against the feminist cause. Nonsense! As if washing up or wearing a bra or having someone open or close a door could be humiliating to me as a woman. The fact is, I love it when a man opens the door for me. ... in my soul is written: "I'm being treated like a goddess. I'm a queen.”
― Paulo Coelho

“Worshiping someone means...placing that person outside of our world. We are not worshiping anyone or anything, we are simply communing with Creation.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello

“We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello

“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unbiased Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unbiased Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic--for that is part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the republicans and mugwumps know it. All the republicans are insane, but only thee democrats and mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me I am often troubled to see how many people are mad.

This should move us to be charitable toward one anothers lunacies.”
― Mark Twain

“Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.”
― Anna Quindlen