Mister God, This is Anna Quotes

“in the dark you have to describe yourself. In the daylight other people describe you.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“The sun is nice but it lights things up so much that you can't see very far... The night time is better. It stretches your soul to the stars.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Mister God made everything, didn’t he?”

There was no point in saying I didn’t really know. I said “Yes.”

“Even the dirt and the stars and the animals and the people and the trees and everything, and the pollywogs?” The pollywogs were those little creatures we had seen under the microscope.

I said, “Yes, he made everything.”

She nodded her agreement. “Does Mister God love us truly?”

“Sure thing,” I said. “Mister God loves everything.”

“Oh,” she said. “well then, why does he let things get hurt and dead?” Her voice sounded as if she felt she had betrayed a sacred trust, but the question had been thought and it had to be spoken.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “There’re a great many things about Mister God, we don’t know about?”

“Well then,” she continued, “if we don’t know many things about Mister God, how do we know he loves us?”

I could see this was going to be one of those times, but thank goodness she didn’t expect an answer to her question, for she hurried on: “Them pollywogs, I could love them till I bust, but they wouldn’t know, would they? I’m million times bigger than they are and Mister God is million times bigger than me, so how do I know what Mister God does?”

She was silent for a little while. Later I thought that at this moment she was taking her last look at babyhood. Then she went on.

“Fynn, Mister God doesn’t love us.” She hesitated. “He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me. I love the pollywogs, but they don’t love me. I love you Fynn, and you love me, don’t you?”

I tightened my arm about her.

“You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truly but he don’t love me.”

It sounded to me like a death knell. “Damn and blast,” I thought. “Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.” But I was wrong.

She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping stone.

“No,” she went on, “no, he don’t love me, not like you do, its different, its millions of times bigger.”

I must have made some movement or noise, for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled. The she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut from the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon.

“Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, cant I? But Mister God is different. You see, Fynn, people can only love outside, and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so its different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.”

It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of the similarities, but God was not like us because of our differences. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love, and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable.

“You see, Fynn, Mister God is different because he can finish things and we cant. I cant finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so its not the same kind of love, is it?”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“If I was the only one I wouldn't be littler or bigger, would I? I'd be just me, wouldn't I?”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“The diffrense from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Anna had bypassed all the nonessentials and distilled centuries of learning into one sentence: "And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don't forget to love yourself." The whole business of adults going to church filled Anna with suspicion. The ide
a of collective worship went against her sense of private conversations with
Mister God. As for going to church to meet Mister God, that was preposterous. After all, if Mister God wasn't everywhere, he wasn't anywhere. For her, churchgoing and "Mister God" talks had no necessary connection. For her, the whole thing was transparently simple. You went to church to get the message whenyou were very little. Once you had got it, you went out and did something about it. Keeping on going to church was because you hadn't got the message or didn't understand it or it was "just for swank.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“A fact was the hard outer cover of meaning, and meaning was the soft living stuff inside a fact. Fact and meaning were the driving cogs of living. If the gear of fact drove the gear of meaning, then they revolved in opposite directions, but put the gear of fantasy between the two and they both revolved in the same direction. Fantasy was and is important; it leads to heaven knows where, but follow it and see. Sometimes it pays off.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“My reason for preferring the darkness is that in the dark you have to describe yourself. In the daylight other people describe you.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Humanity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had an infinite number of viewing points.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“I suppose that the human mind can only stand so much grief and anguish. After that the fuses blow.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Dying could be a bit of a problem, but not if you had really lived. Dying needed a certain amount of preparation and the only preparation for dying was real living,”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Why do we go to church, Fynn?"
"To understand Mister God more."
"Less."
"Less what?"
"To understand Mister God less."
.................
"You go to church to make Mister God really, really, really big, then you really, really don't understand Mister God- then you do.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Аз съм"… Това е трудното. "Аз съм". Наистина, опитайте се да си го кажете, и вече сте си вкъщи. Кажете го с мисъл, и вече сте пълни, вече сте само вътре. Не е нужно да искате неща отвън, които да запълват празнините отвътре.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“The difference from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside." These are the words of six- year old Anna, sometimes called Mouse, Hum, or Joy. At five years, Anna knew absolutely the purpose of being, knew the meaning of love, and was a personal friend and helper of Mister God. At six, Anna was a theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet, and gardener. If you asked her a question you would always get ananswer in due course. On some occasions the answer would be delayed for weeks or months; but eventually, in her own good time, the answer would come: direct, simple, and much to the point.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“You don’t have to want things outside you to fill up the gaps inside you. You don’t leave bits of you hanging around on objects in shop-windows, in catalogues or on advertising hoardings. Wherever you go you take your whole self with you, you don’t leave bits lying around to get stamped on, you’re all of a piece,”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“I began to realize why most people went to sleep in the night-time – it was easier. A whole lot easier.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Mister God can know things and people from the inside too. We only know them from the outside, don’t we? So you see, Fynn, people can’t talk about Mister God from the outside; you can only talk about Mister God from the inside of him.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“All the universe has got a sex-like quality about it. It is seminal and productive at the same time. The seeds of words produce ideas. The seeds of ideas produce goodness knows what. The whole blessed thing is male and female at one and the same time. In fact, the whole thing is pure sex. We’ve taken one aspect of it and called it sex, or made it self-conscious and called it Sex. But that was our own fault, wasn’t it?
– Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Letting your soul, or whatever fancy name you like to give it, out of its cage and into the daylight is perhaps the hardest thing anyone can do.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Фин, на небето няма различни църкви, защото всеки е вътре в себе си. Външните неща са тези, които правят всички различни църкви и синагоги, и храмове, и такива работи. Фин, Мистър Бог е казал „Аз съм“ и точно това иска да кажем всички – ето кое е трудното.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“- Мистър Бог понякога е съвсем малък, нали? Иначе как ще знае, как живеят калинките?
Разбира се. Беше като с Алиса в страната на чудесата. Анна хапваше от баницата и ставаше толкова малка или голяма, колкото искаше.
- Когато си точно такъв, изобщо не го знаеш - каза тя изведнъж, без преход.
- Не знаеш какво?
- Не знаеш, че си мил и добър.
Каза го с глас, сякаш се подразбираше, в пренебрегнато полуизречение. Познавах тази интонация. Когато говореша така, очакваше въпроси. Нещо непременно се опитваше да ми каже.
- Добре, дребосъчке, я ми го обясни.
Тя се ухили.
- Ако знаеш, че си добър, изобщо не си като Мистър Бог, ама никак.
Почувствах се като двойкаджията на класа и само поптах:
- Защо?
- Да не мислисш, че Мистър Бог знае, че е добър и мил и милосърден?
- Дребосъчке, никога не съм мислил за това. Може би изобщо не му трябва да го знае?
Един Господ знае, в какъв диалектичен спор се опитваше да ме оплете Анна. По-добре беше да не прекалявам с въпросите. Нещо се опитваше да нацели. Търсеше идея, израз, който да задоволи и двама ни. Накрая енергично отсече:
- Мистър Бог изобщо си няма представа, че е добър или мил, Мистър Бог е съвсем... празен.
Що се отнася до Анна, съм готов на всичко. Но "Мистър Бог е съвсем празен" - това надхвърли всички граници. Това изречение съкруши всичко, което някога бях учил, защото Мистър Бог беше пълен, натъпкан като коледна гъска със знание, любов, съчувствие. По дяволите, така беше! "Мистър Бог е съвсем празен" - колко нелепо!
Днес не получих повече сведения от Анна, нито през следващите няколко дена. Остави ме да се пържа в собствен сос. Идеята за един съвършено празен Бог не ми излизаше от главата. Беше нелепо, но просто не можех да се отърва от нея.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“In here was the image
of God. It isn't the devil in humanity that makes man a lonely creature, it's his God-likeness. It's the fullness of the Good that can't get out or can't find its proper "other place" that makes for loneliness.Anna's misery was for others. They just could not see the beauty of that broken iron stump, the colors, the crystalline shapes; they could not see the possibilities there. Anna wanted them to join with her in this exciting new world , but they could not imagine themselves to be so small that this jagged fracture
could become a world of iron mountains, of iron plains with crystal trees.It was a new world to explore, a world of the imagination, a world where few people would or could follow her. In this broken-off stump was a whole new realm of possibilities to be explored and to be enjoyed.
Mister God most certainly enjoyed it, but then Mister God didn't at all
mind making himself small. People thought that Mister God was very big, and that's where they made a big mistake. Obviously Mister God could be any size he wanted to be.
"If he couldn't be little, how could he know what it's like to be a lady
-bird?" Indeed, how could he? So, like Alice in Wonderland, Anna ate of the cake of imagination and altered her size to fit the occasion.After all, Mister God did not have only one point of view but an infinity of viewing points, and the whole purpose of living was to be like Mister God. So far as Anna was concerned, being good, being generous, being kind, praying, and all that kind of stuff had very little to do with Mister God. They were, in the jargon of today, merely
"spinoffs." This sort of thing was just "playing it safe," and Anna was going to
have none of it. No! Religion was all about being like Mister God and it was here that things could get a little tough. The instructions weren't to be good and kind and loving, etc., and it therefore followed that you would be more like Mi
ster God. No! The whole point of being alive was to be like Mister God and then you couldn't help but be good and kind and loving, could you?”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“For Anna, ‘love’ meant the recognition of perfectibility in another. Anna ‘saw’ a person in every part. Anna ‘saw’ a ‘you’. Now that is something to experience, to be seen as a ‘you’, clearly and definitely, with no parts hidden. Wonderful and frightening.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“My reason for preferring the darkness is that in the dark you have to describe yourself. In the daylight other people describe you. Do you understand that?”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Fantasy was and is important; it leads to heaven knows where, but follow it and see. Sometimes it pays off.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“I suppose to some extent all children have a touch of magic about them – like some mysterious living lens they seem to have the capacity to focus the light into the darkest and gloomiest of places – and this one had it in a very high degree. Perhaps it’s the very newness of the young, or perhaps it’s just because the shine hasn’t worn off, but they can and do, if you give them half a chance, make a dent in the toughest armour of life. If you’re very lucky they can dissolve away all those protective barricades so carefully erected over years of living.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“It isn’t the Devil in humanity that makes man a lonely creature, it’s his Godlikeness. It’s the fullness of the Good that can’t get out or can’t find its proper ‘other place’ that makes for loneliness.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don’t forget to love yourself.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“Да обичаш всички, както обичаш себе си, а за това трябва първо да си пълен със себе си, за да обичаш истински.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“The daylight schooled the senses and the night-time developed the wits, stretched the imagination, sharpened fantasy, hammered home the memory and altered the whole scale of values.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna