Be with Me Always Quotes

“In the early 1830s the writer George Sand, a woman, had a man's overcoat and a pair of boots made for her so she could have the same pleasure - to walk the streets of Paris free to look at whatever she liked. In her autobiography she writes: "I can't express the pleasure my boots gave me ... With those little iron-shot heels, I was on solid pavement. I flew from one end of Paris to the other. It seemed to me that I could go round the world. And then, my clothes feared nothing. I ran out in every kind of weather, I came home at every sort of hour ... No one paid any attention to me, and no one guessed at my disguise ... No one knew me, no one looked at me, no one found fault with me; I was an atom lost in that immense crowd.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays

“The tension between not being let in and not being let go fixes us. Especially when it's the not-being-let-in that won't let you go. You're held at the threshold. You're turned away, but you can't turn away.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays

“Muscle

It takes strength to move between opposites, between safety and danger, steeping and swimming, 'x' and 'y,' love and love.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays

“Before we leave, we pick up the casings, bright red in the dull dead leaves. My cheek is also red. The next day a bruise will show. But for now it is hot, and I am happy, exhilarated, still quivering with the anticipation of something already passed.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays

“In Russia a devout man or a woman might have lived as a 'poustinik,' living alone but not in isolation, always ready to welcome and serve a stranger. The Russian word for 'solitude' means 'being with everybody.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays

“The face that looked back at me from this mirror was also round and rosy, framed at the top by a precise line of straight-cut bangs. My eyes were wide and dark, unshadowed by disappointment or compassion. My teeth were new and awkward, the two front ones serrated at the bottom like a bread knife, but I was too young to try to smile with my lips closed or laugh behind my hand. I never thought my face would change. I thought my childhood would go one forever.
Instead, I grew out my bangs and grew up.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays

“HAUNT: to materialize, appear in, frequent, visit, disturb, torment. None of these captures the contrary nature of hauntedness - to be filled with hollowness, to ache for something not entirely wanted, to have and have not.”
― Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays