On My Mind

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with clarity that makes nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.” – Joan Didion, “Goodbye To All That”, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high eagles.” – Annie Dillard, “The Weasel”, The Abundance

“Could it be that every ten years you simply started something that couldn’t be finished, that was impossible to finish because the person you needed to be to write the book never settled into form, or the form came and went while you were off teaching or buying furniture in a little city that stayed little the whole time you were there?” – Renee Gladman, Calamities

“I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind.” – Annie Dillard, “Seeing”, The Abundance

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