The Journal Keeper Quotes

“My nose remembers more than my eyes. The sharp oily smell of eucalyptus combines with afternoon dust from the hockey field. But my heart feels the different then and now.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“There were times, in the beginning, when I used my journal as a wailing wall, but I learned not to immortalize the darkness. Rereading it was counterproductive. What I needed was a place in which to collect the light.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“Real love opens doors to something larger than oneself.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“An enlightened person raises the level of the consciousness of the entire community.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“Children are born with imaginations in mint condition, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Then life corrects for grandiosity.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“During this week, Ragan has experience a bit of insecurity with me, the result of my being quieter than usual, which he interprets as being a withdrawal from him. “No,” I countered, “it is a withdrawal into myself.” I do not think the same need exists in him. Quiet can be the two of us reading silently. But he prefers that I be nearby. I need regular time without anybody else around in order to feel restored.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“I can feel my heart growing daily, which has its uncomfortable aspects, as if it could fall with the weight of love and break.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“Writing is a deeply spiritual act that can have a profound effect upon the practitioner.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“Falling silent should be cultivated, the way the woods fall silent in the snow. Messages you can’t send any other way can be heard.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“If you don’t consider your life a pilgrimage, it gets downgraded to a trip or even an aimless journey. It is we who make that decision.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“getting older is not a gift. But we had better make it one or be left with the knowledge that we have been ungrateful for life itself.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“Looking at a friend who has had a face lift is like reading a book with half the pages ripped out.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“Everything we are given or learn or possess in any real sense - - the ability to play Beethoven sonata, write books, understand the principles of physics – is intended for one thing: to draw us closer to our selves.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about his metaphor is that is makes writing much more than a lifesaving venture.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“The power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged, God has kept that good wine until now. It is from the backs of the elderly gentlemen that the wings of the butterfly should burst.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“There is guidance for each of us,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir