Quotes & Words – Week of Nov 13

The past 10 days have been hard and I think things are only going to get harder. But words, books, stories still have power and they’ve been a comfort this past week. I hope that continues, so this post is an effort to share with you the books, words, quotes that have made a difference to me over the past week. 

Books read:

Upstream by Mary Oliver
Blackacre by Monica Youn
A Woman of Property by Robyn Schiff
The Wangs Vs. the World by Jade Chang
Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

Poems read:

“The Break” by Bettina Judd at The Offing
“Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” – Mary Oliver, Upstream

“How wonderful that the universe is beautiful in so many places and in so many ways. But also the universe is brisk and businesslike, and no doubt does not give its delicate landscape or its thunderous displays of power, and perhaps perception, too, for our sakes or our improvement. Nevertheless, its intonations are our best tonics, if we would take them. For the universe is full of radiant suggestion. For whatever reason, the heart cannot separate the world’s appearance and actions from morality and valor, and the power of every idea is intensified, if not actually created, by its expression in substance. Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity.” – Mary Oliver, Upstream

epiphyte, n – a plant that grows harmlessly on another plant

deodand, n – a thing forfeited or given to God, specifically, in law, an object or instrument which becomes forfeit because it has caused a person’s death

“one siren stains the morning in concentric rings” – Monica Youn, Blackacre

“you are possibility’s possibility” – Bettina Judd, “The Break”

“There are entire worlds that exist just beneath our notice of them.” – Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything

“Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.”
– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Making a Fist”