“I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.”
Annie Dillard (1945) American writer
Source: Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
As quoted in The New York Times (18 April 1967)
“I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.”
Annie Dillard (1945) American writer
Source: Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist
Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)
Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist
Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian archbishop, as quoted in Peace Behind Bars : A Peacemaking Priest's Journal from Jail (1995) by John Dear, p. 65; this is a translation of "Quando dou comida aos pobres chamam-me de santo. Quando pergunto por que eles são pobres chamam-me de comunista."
Variant translations:
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a Communist.
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.
Misattributed
Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher
Quoted in "Forever is in the Now: The Timeless Message of Sri Ramana Maharshi", p. 192
“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Crack-Up
Variant: In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning.
Source: Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)
Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian
Strategic Grill Locations
“I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.”
Elizabeth Hand (1957) American writer
Apocalypse Descending (2002)
Context: I was about ten when I first read 1984 and Lord of the Flies, both of which absolutely terrified me — especially 1984, because I figured out that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, would have been born the same year I was. I knew these books were fiction, but I was far too young to have a grasp on the political or cultural realities behind them — I had no distance or detachment from what I read: it seemed too real to me, too possible.