Man Fast Quotes

“Chinese proverb: “Pearls don’t lie on the seashore. If you want one, you must dive for it.”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“And thus I accepted the invitation, still there, yet stronger and louder, from some place beyond anything I knew, and the scariest part was that it was asking me to sever myself from my ordinary world in order to grow. The deal it seemed to be making with me was twofold: If I wanted to reclaim myself, I had to let go of the things that made me feel secure. Likewise, to go in and expand back outward, I had to let go of the narratives in my life that were disempowering. I had to let go of what I didn’t need and what I was not; it was a real disrobing. And if I wanted to learn to trust the universe again, I had to move forward with a peaceful, questioning kind of faith—and leave everything else behind.”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“Darkness, it turned out, would be my ultimate teacher. The Buddhists consider suffering to be the ultimate gateway to awakening, and mine had brought me to a crossroads of sorts. One road was paved and would take me along a more conventional route. It was the more popular road because it was simpler to navigate, well lit, and easier to tread (and faster, even though there was more traffic). Here people had faces and everything was orderly and sterile. There was a solid framework, and things were done in certain ways and did not stray from those ways. The other was scarier, darker, less familiar, with shadows and turns and faceless beings and mountains to scale, but with a whole lot of mystique, with varying shades of light and wind that spoke, blowing in different directions and making everything feel circular rather than linear. It was the more unpredictable road, easier to get lost on, obscured with brambles. This road beckoned me, tugged at my heartstrings, but I hedged, afraid of losing everything familiar to me, of alienation. I feared I would become some lonely, ghostly figure. It was safer to stick to what I knew, but the familiar was no longer comforting to me.”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know.’ —Wisława Szymborska”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“Failure to manage our thoughts means we end up with hundreds of invisible energy vampires storming around us all day, sucking out our creative juices and depleting our life force.”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“Viktor Frankl, who survived the Holocaust, said that we can’t avoid suffering, but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.2 That is where the meaning is hidden—in the suffering. It’s the beating heart of life, without which everything feels arbitrary and numbing; otherwise, there’s too much coasting without the undulations that make life—the lows low, the highs high.”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“Sages have long warned about getting started on a spiritual path—according to them, there is no turning back. When you start questioning things, you can’t really turn around. Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Why not just floss, pay your taxes, and have fun?”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life,” Socrates had warned.”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir

“Love is the whole thing,” wrote Rumi. “We are only pieces.”
― Natasha Scripture, Man Fast: A Memoir