The Chief of Birds Quotes

“A future is impossible, the past has become incoherent, the present an inaccessible blank. All I had, all I could access were fictions, multiple layers of thought, and books I was not supposed to read since what I read led me astray from my path to God and sanity. Having the past shattered into a present that is meaningless, the future becomes nothing at all.”
― Michael Templeton, The Chief of Birds: A Memoir

“Individual days slide like the imperceptible creep of old glass that is revealed only by the ripples that appear after many years. Nothing happens even while things are happening until days become opaque and rippled like an old windowpane. And we see through ourselves with the same level of clarity.”
― Michael Templeton, The Chief of Birds: A Memoir