Alison Zak > Alison's Quotes

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, confidence swaggering into the storm: Man against Nature. Of all the possible conflicts, that was the one that was hopeless. Even a slim education had taught her this much: Man loses.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Do you think its possible to live without wanting to put your name on your paintings? To belong to a group so securely you don't need to rise above it?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven

“To encounter a fine book
and have time to read it
is a wonderful thing.”
― Natalie Goldberg

“These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”
― Annie Dillard, The Living

“No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say — snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola — something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present.

Often when a southerner reads, the members of the class look at each other, and you can hear them thinking, gee, I can't write like that. The power and force of the land is heard in the piece. These southerners know the names of what shrubs hang over what creek, what dogwood flowers bloom what color, what kind of soil is under their feet.

I tease the class, "Pay no mind. It's the southern writing gene. The rest of us have to toil away.”
― Natalie Goldberg

“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.”
― Natalie Goldberg

“Inspiration means breathing in. Breathing in God.”
― Natalie Goldberg (Author)

“The old cobbler had believed in something he called "the signature of all things"-namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator's love.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“We live in the world when we love it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies

“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames”
― Rumi

“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
― Rumi

“Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged”
― Jalal ad-Din Rumi

“When you feel a peaceful joy, that's when you are near truth.”
― Rumi

“If you are a kind person and love animals, you may be lucky enough to find the Magic Valley. There you will discover a land where snow leopards play and mountains smile. I should tell you, though, that it will be a very hard journey. But I should also tell you that it is well worth the effort.”
― Helen Freeman

“When it's raining pudding, hold up your bowl.”
― Sandra Dallas, Prayers for Sale