All the hatin just fuels to my fire.
I'm drawn to this range, that's for sure, but I suppose the thing that most appeals to me about Mandelstam is the sense you get from every poem that everything - the poet's very soul - is at stake.
Art is so often better at theology than theology is.
Sorrow is so woven through us, so much a part of our souls, or at least any understanding of our souls that we are able to attain, that every experience is dyed with its color. This is why, even in moment of joy, part of that joy is the seams of ore that are our sorrow. They burn darkly and beautifully in the midst of joy, and they make joy the complete experience that it is. But they still burn.
Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.
To be truly alive is to feel one's ultimate existence within one's daily existence.
There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.
Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is.
My maternal desires are fully satisfied with my dogs.
If you want pancakes for breakfast, offer to help make them.
No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.