The Desert of Glass Quotes

“Purpose alone. The soul’s one and only path for escape from the black hole of true misery. Purpose.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“Anthropologically speaking, knowledge would be the details of how to do something.  Wisdom is more about why.  Not just what we do, but why.  Or perhaps whether we should.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“A perpetual argument.  An endless cycle running repeatedly in a world that had not and would not change unless something interrupted the pattern.  Something so meaningful and profound that it would make every person stop and reassess what the world meant to them and what life meant to them.  To make them remember that our individual flashes in time were precious, never to repeat.  Never to remember what we had done or learned even between the bickering.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“Because this was it. Once we were gone, our lessons and memories”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“Long lifespans would have the opposite effect,” she continued.  “The longer you live, the more you learn and the more valuable and effective your personal experience becomes, resulting in a deeper cultural knowledge base.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“purpose and meaning relied on one common denominator.  Responsibility. And it was true.  Responsibility led to purpose, and purpose led to meaning.  It was as easy as that—almost silly in its simplicity, though harder in execution.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“She thought about how short a human lifespan was on a planet like this.  In a universe like this.  Seventy or eighty years against millions or even billions, making the span of a human life little more than a speck—at best, a momentary flash in time compared to things like a lake or an ocean, whose waves and ripples felt timeless, ambivalent of what floated on or within them.  It reminded Angela of the old saying that an ocean had no memory. In reality, the only true sense of time was born through human consciousness, with human lives being just a momentary flash within it.  So brief and so temporary, yet humans spent so much of their flash doing what?  Arguing and fighting.  Only to have their entire existence snuffed out seventy or eighty years later.  Sometimes sooner, sometimes later.  Everything they felt.  Everything they thought about or loved.  Gone into the ether.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“First and foremost, the Desert of Glass is real. It has existed for thousands of years between Egypt and Libya and is believed by many to have mystical and unexplained powers. You can travel to Egypt and see it, and even take home a piece as a souvenir.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“stop and ponder.  Just how much of our lives did the average person spend in some form of confrontation with something or someone over what they thought was right either mentally or emotionally?  And most of it, she knew, being an anthropologist, were the same arguments.  The same worries and bickering that thousands of generations had before us.  The same fears.  The same controversies.  The same disagreements.  In many cases humans had fought over the very same resources. A perpetual argument.  An endless cycle running repeatedly in a world that had not and would not change unless something interrupted the pattern.  Something so meaningful and profound that it would make every person stop and reassess what the world meant to them and what life meant to them.  To make them remember that our individual flashes in time were precious, never to repeat.  Never to remember what we had done or learned even between the bickering. Because this was it. Once we were gone, our lessons and memories were lost forever.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“The same worries and bickering that thousands of generations had before us.  The same fears.  The same controversies.  The same disagreements.  In many cases humans had fought over the very same resources. A perpetual argument.  An endless cycle running repeatedly in a world that had not and would not change unless something interrupted the pattern.  Something so meaningful and profound that it would make every person stop and reassess what the world meant to them and what life meant to them.  To make them remember that our individual flashes in time were precious, never to repeat.  Never to remember what we had done or learned even between the bickering. Because this was it. Once we were gone, our lessons and memories were lost forever.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“became”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“that purpose and meaning relied on one common denominator.  Responsibility. And it was true.  Responsibility led to purpose, and purpose led to meaning.  It was as easy as that—almost silly in its simplicity, though harder in execution.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass

“The soul’s one and only path for escape from the black hole of true misery. Purpose.”
― Michael C. Grumley, The Desert of Glass