Think of writing practice as loving arms
you come to illogically and incoherently.
~Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
So you mustn’t be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus Prim, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall…
In you, dear Mr. Kappus Prim, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like some one who is recovering; for perhaps you are both.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Some accuse me of morbidity, their assertion supported by a scaffold of dark twigs; my fondness for cemeteries and storms, my ubiquitous clothing choice in the color without color, my reliance upon heavy literature, my collection of dying words. I wish that I might lend them my lens, an owl bestowing her nighttime sight to the worshippers of the sun, that they might see beyond the limits of labels to the radiant core of all—Beauty.
Who is it? Who is it?
~Billy the Kid
Does nobody understand?
~James Joyce
The sadness will last forever.
~Vincent van Gogh