Deena Metzger > Quotes

“Beauty appears when something is completely and absolutely and openly itself.”
― Deena Metzger

“Without compassion, we will never know anyone or anything, not even our own story. Too much judgment, too many ideas and attitudes will stand in the way of the fundamental principle that we are similar to, connected with, and part of everything else.”
― Deena Metzger

“Write against patterns. Go against the devils. Write what you never write. Lie. Validate what you don’t validate. Indulge what you don’t like. Wallow in it. Write the opposite of what you always write, think, speak. Do everything against the grain!”
― Deena Metzger

“Understanding the Way of Story as a sacred pattern and a living event. Story can reveal a spiritual path and or the way to healing. Stories become the foundation of health, peacebuilding and vision. Learning to listen, to recognize, to understand and attend the teachings and revelations of the Stories we have been given to live guides us toward the 5th world. Our individual stories, when carefully attended, can reveal each person’s particular path of healing and transformation. Even illness is a story that can lead us to our own and to community healing. Learning to recognize the Story that we or another is living can be a worthy life work.”
― Deena Metzger

“There are those who try to set
Fire to the world
We are in danger
There is only time to move slowly
There is no time not to love.”
― Deena Metzger

“What must I say? What must I say? What must I say? What must I say? And finally, What must I say to you?”
― Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds

“If the journal is the jumble of raw material—blood, bones, sinews—and a poem is the cell, the impulse, the story is the entire animal.”
― Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds

“Some languages, unlike the Indo-European ones, do not separate subject and verb so that an action is never seen as distinct from the actor.”
― Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds

“THE FIRST ROOTS CREEP UP
I am learning to come upon the tree, slowly, to surprise it
For the song its memorizing. The water runs up, the sap
Runs down…
I will carry water for you, if you ask me. If someone
Asks me

What differences between trees and me? Each is
Beholden
to rivers. each knows thirst. In those countries where
trees
walk, they go barefoot, singing madrigals…

excerpt, Collected in: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature by Lorraine Anderson”
― Deena Metzger

“Give me everything mangled and bruised, and I will make a light of it to make you weep. And we will have rain & begin again.”
― Deena Metzger

“Sometimes fear cannot be distinguised from excitement.”
― Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Journey – A Dynamic Practice for Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit

“Languages are as distinct as people, and they put their stamp on us.”
― Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Journey – A Dynamic Practice for Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit

“Soon creativity and self-knowledge will seem like twin sisters, similar but distinct comrades who have a common origin.”
― Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds

“When we feel fear, we shrink away, but when we’re excited we go toward. Let’s go toward. Let’s go farther. Let’s invite the creative into ourselves.”
― Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Journey – A Dynamic Practice for Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit