I’ll be blogging spottily over the next few weeks because we are on the road and the beach. Unfortunately my use of the internet is limited to cafes and in tonight’s case Barnes and Noble.

This here post consists of three beautiful quotes which I feel compelled to share. The first is from Vikram Seth, the second from Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin, and the third from Ann Lamott. Enjoy!

“Perhaps I was annoyed by Nicholas’s remarks because I have mixed feelings about the Trout. It’s a funny old piece. It stops and starts and has so many repeats but I truly love it. It seems absurd that he was twenty-two.”

“We may as well just give up,” I say.

After a longish pause, Piers says: “Well yes, that’s what I thought for a long time. But now I’ve stopped thinking hat anything short of creating a masterpiece is pointless. I just ask myself two questions about what I’m doing here in my niche in the galaxy. Is it better done or not? And is it better that I do this than something else?” He pauses, then says: “And I suppose I’ve just added another one: is it better that someone else does this than me?”

Vikram Seth, An Equal Music

“People way they don’t read poetry because they don’t understand it. But you don’t start by understanding it; you begin by physically responding to it: You’re hearing something. You’re moved. It’s not because you just understood a calculus problem—something’s got to you, you’re not quite sure why and how.”

“You can’t change the whole thing, but all you can do is what’s in front of you. I can’t stop the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, but I can plant a tree.”

Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin, Oprah: April 2011

“Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. …the act of writing turns out to be it’s own reward.”

“Yet I would do it all over again in a hot second, mistakes and doldrums and breakdowns and all. Sometimes I could not tell you exactly why, especially when it feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems. Other days though, my writing is like a person to me—the person who, after all these years, still makes sense to me. It reminds me of “The Wild Rose,” a poem Wendell Berry wrote for his wife.

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and in trust,

so that I live by you unaware

as by the bearing of my heart,

Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose blooming at the edge

of thicket, grace, and light

where yesterday was only shade,

and once again I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before.

“All my life I’ve felt that there was something magical about people who could get into other peoples minds and skin, who could take people like me out of ourselves and then take us back to ourselves. And you know what? I still do.”

Ann Lamott, Bird By Bird

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