Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Context: I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another early bedtime in Rome. Another long night's sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrase books and dictionaries.
I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone.
Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees, and press my forehead against the floor. There I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks.
First in English.
Then in Italian.
And then — just to get the point across — in Sanskrit.
And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment where this entire story began — a moment that also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying.
“I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.”
Source: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
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Angela Carter 43
English novelist 1940–1992Related quotes
“I am the shadow on the moon at night/Filling your dreams to the brim with fright.”
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“What is the body? That shadow of a shadow
of your love, that somehow contains
the entire universe.”
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Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)
“I could fill an entire second life with working on my prints.”
undated quotes, M.C. Escher Foundation
“I am the immense shadow of my tears”
"A Man's Root" as quoted in Mishima's Sword : Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend (2007) by Christopher Ross, p. 195.
“I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.”
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: Dread. Bottomless dread...
I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.