Kathleen Norris Quotes - Page 2

Poets are immersed in process, and I mean process not as an amorphous blur but as a discipline. The hard work of writing has taught me that in matters of the heart, such as writing, or faith, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but only the way of your life. Just paying attention will teach you what bears fruit and what doesn't. But it will be necessary to revise--to doodle, scratch out, erase, even make a mess of things--in order to make it come out right.

The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the “I do” of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married.

One may have been a fool, but there's no foolishness like being bitter.

Each and every one of us has one obligation, during the bewildered days of our pilgrimage here: the saving of his own soul, and secondarily and incidentally thereby affecting for good such other souls as come under our influence.

Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day.

I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?

Changing husbands is only changing troubles.

I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.

Only Christ could have brought us all together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things.

The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the delusion that the daily is of little significance.

Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.

I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change.

I write what I would like to read.

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

A short-lived fascination with another person may be exciting-I think we've all seen people aglow, in a state of being "in love with love"-but such an attraction is not sustainable over the long run. Paradoxically, human love is sanctified not in the height of attraction and enthusiasm, but in the everyday struggles of living with another person. It is not in romance but in routine that the possibilities for transformation are made manifest. And that requires commitment.

It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?

To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.

Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.

If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.

Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.

Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas.

The demon of acedia -- also called the noonday demon -- is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. . . . He makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and . . . he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself.

Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.

Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.