The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of nonconviction. . . . It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirits, the pit at the center, and rising hope.
Interpretation
The body communicates emotions and experiences in various forms, reflecting our inner states.
This quote emphasizes the idea that our bodies are expressive entities that convey a wide range of emotions and experiences beyond mere words. It illustrates how physical sensations, such as color and temperature, shape our emotional states and embody our feelings—ranging from love and recognition to pain and hope—highlighting the intrinsic connection between our physical presence and emotional life.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a wellness seminar to emphasize the connection between physical health and emotional well-being.
Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.
Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.
Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.
Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything - we need only listen.
There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.
The seventh day of creation is the most eloquent and insightful as to the nature of God. From a literary perspective, the Sabbath forms the pinnacle of the story. Like the dramatic kiss of a soldier returning from war, this is the moment we’re not meant to miss. In choosing rest as the grand finale, God reveals himself as one driven by neither anxiety nor fear but one who finds gladness in both the work of creation and the creation of work.
I cannot agree with those who think of the Bill of Rights as an 18th century straitjacket, unsuited for this age...The evils it guards against are not only old, they are with us now, they exist today.
I had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was.
When resources become skimpy, human beings don't suddenly cooperate to conserve what's left. They fight to the last scrap for possession of a diminishing resource.
I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time.
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?
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