Table Of ContentQUNBEAMQ
V^ V^
A BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
SAFRANSKY
SY
^W
Sunbeams : a book of quotations /
PM6081 S96 1990 21361
«U
COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA (SF)
PN
6081
S96
1990
UJaU cUe^
\JooA v^vo^VjiVs are- CK (Xi^.rxS-r $
edited
by
SAFRANSKY
SY
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California
Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations
© 1990 hyThe Sun PublishingCompany, Inc.
ISBN 1-55643-045-0
Published by North Atlantic Bcxiks
2800 Woolsey Street
Berkeley, California 94705
This is issue #42 of the lo series.
Cover and book design by Paula Morrison
Typeset by Campai^ne 61 AsscKiatesTypography
Printed in the United States of America
Sunbeams: A Booh of Quotations is sponsored
by the Society for the Study ofNative Arts and
Sciences, a nonprofit educational corptiration
whose goals are to develop an ecological and
crosscultural perspective linking various scien-
tific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holis-
tic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and heal-
ing; and to publish and distribute literature on
the relationship of mind, btxiy, and nature.
INTRODUCTION
Once a month, my desk at The Sun becomes amazing how often a quote will affect us in a way
extravagantly cluttered with stacks ofbooks and the author could never have imagined. Some-
magazines and letters and scribbled notes. For times the meaning of a quote changes simply
—
hours, I sift through them reading, jotting because it appears out of context. But it's also
down a few words, staring out the window, read- true that certain words have a life oftheir own.
ing some more, searching through hundreds of Clear as a window, they allow us to see through
quotations for the handful that will become them; reading them, we see whatwe need to see.
next month's Sunbeams.
I haven't deliberately left out well-known quota-
It's a familiar ritual. But, even after all these tions, though I tend to shy away from them.
years, I still don't know why 1 tall in love with Certain favorite authors come up again and
some quotes and not others. Drawn from such again, but if the same quote appears twice, it's
diverse sources as stories, essays, speeches, inter- in spite ofthe most rigorous proofreading. Every
views, novels, memoirs, and poems, the Sun- effort has been made to make sure the quotes
beams page surely reflects my own likes and dis- are accurately worded and attributed; if the
likes, passions and confusions. Yet some strange name of the work was known, it too was
alchemy seems to be at work: I can't be sure included. If a quote seemed worth using hut,
whether I choose Sunbeams or they choose me. because of its gender-exclusive language, was
plainly sexist, it appears unedited. Such a deci-
This is a collection of the best S—unbeams from sion can be argued endlessly; I saw no choice
more than a decade. Mercifully for my sake but to be faithful to the original text.
—
and yours 1 didn't try to organize the quotes
into subjects; instead, they appear as they did Perhaps all anthologies owe a debt to kindred
in the magazine, with all the startling juxta- anthologies, and this one is no exception. I
positions that honor, more accurately than any have more quote books than many small libraries;
subject headings, the rich and paradoxical nature special favorites are Richard Kehl's Silver Depar-
of our lives. tures, Art Spiegelman and Bob Schneider's
Whole Grains, Russell McDougal's Mirror Of
— —
Placing certain quotations together is like seat- Mind and yes John Bartlett's Familiar Quota-
ing strangers around a dinner table; you can't he tions, which I find surprisingly readable.
sure where the conversation will lead. Also, it's
Thanks, tinally, to all the readers oi The Sun
who have sent in suggestions for Sunbeams, and
to everyone at The Sun who helped to prepare
this Kxik. It you'd like to know more aKuit The
Sun, an independent journal that publishes a
wide range of essays, interviews, fiction, and
—
poetry—and still, every month, a paj,'e of Sun-
beams drop me a line at 107 North Roberson
NC
Street. Chapel Hill, 27516.—
Sy Safransky
Most quote Kii^ks bc>j to be opened at random,
but consider reading; this bot)k front to back. It's
divided into "chapters" that correspond to the
original Sunbeams pages from The Sun, set off
from each other by
o o o o o
He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the Since everything is but an apparition
wild elephant goes. — Perfect in being what it is,
Randolph Bourne Having nothing to do with good or bad, accep-
tance or rejection.
Properly, we shd. read for power. Man reading One may well burst out in laught—er.
shd. be man intensely alive. The book shd. be Longchenpa
a ball of light in one's hands.
—
Ezra Pound When men dream, each has his own world.
When they are awake, they have a common
world.
—
Heraclitus
Give light, and the darkness will disappear of
itself. —
Desiderius Erasmus
The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover
universally that the mind's muddy river, this
ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be
dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of
effort that might lead to madness.
^Annie
Dillard
People talk about love as if it were something
you could give, like—an armful of flowers.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Prayer is not the moment when God and
humans are in relationship, for that is always.
Prayer is taking initiative to intentionally
respond to God's presence. —
L. Robert Keck
Prayers are answered in the way th—ey're asked.
Ram Tirth
I felt itbetter to speak t—o God than about Him.
St. Theresa of Lisieux
Sl'NBEAMS
I lcK>ked more widely around me, I studied the churning out draft after draft of crap, waiting
lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, like a neglected baby for just one drop of
not two OT three, or ten, but hundreds, mother's milk.
thousands, millions, had so understood the —Philip Roth
meaning of life that they were able both to live
and to die. All these men were well acquainted A writer is someone for whom writing is more
with the meaning oi lite and death, quietly difficult than it is for other pe—ople.
laK)red, endured privation and suffering, lived Thomas Mann
and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a
gocxJ thing. — One must learn to love, and go through a gcxxl
Leo Tolstoy deal o\ suffering to get to it, like any knight of
the grail, and the journey is always toward the
Whenever you get there, there'—s no there there. other st)ul, not away from it. Do you think that
Gertrude Stein K)ve is an accomplished thing, the day it is rec-
ognized? It isn't. To love, you have to learn to
understand the other more than she understands
o o o o o
herself, and to submit to her understanding of
you. It is damnably difficult and painful, but it
is the only thing which endures. You mustn't
After fifteen years of total solitude, St. think that yourdesire or \xmr fundamental need
Seraphim ofSarow exclaimed at the sight ot the is to make a career, or to fill up your life with
least visitor, "Oh joy!" Wi)uld one who had activity, or even provide for your family mate-
never refrained from rubbing sht>ulders with his rially. It isn't. Your most vital necessity in life
fellow men have dared to greet them in such an is that you shall love your wife ci^mpletely and
extravagant fashion.' implicitly and in entire nakedness of Kxly and
—
E.M. Cioran spirit. Then you will have peace and inner secu-
rity no matter how many things go wrong. And
What doesn't kill me, makes mc stronger. this peace and security will leave you free to act
—
Albert Camus and to produce your own work, a real and inde-
pendent workman.
—
1 wouldn't write a Kmk to win a fight. I'd rather D.H. Lawrence
go fifteen rounds with Sonny Liston. At least it
would be over in an hour and I could go to bed. There are so many little dyings every day, it
But a btH)k takes me two years, if I'm lucky. doesn't matter which one o—f them is death.
Eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days Kenneth Patchen
a year, that's the only way I know how to do it.
You have to sit alone in a room with only a tree Our own heart always exc—eeds us.
out the window to talk to. Yt)u have to sit there Rainer Maria Rilke
