Mark Salzman > Quotes

“My writing is how I maintain.”
― Mark Salzman, True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall

“What if I have it all upside down? What if I'm the one who knows nothing of God, and the people in the world are actually interceding on my behalf with their ordinary daily struggles”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“It's a mean story, Helen fumed. An absentee father who demands that his children put him at the center of their lives and beg for his return. Sister Priscilla didn't think it was mean, apparently. She was so in love with God that she had married him, even though she would not see his face, hear his voice, or feel his embrace for as long as she lived. One of us, Helen, thought is flying blind.”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“Am I really a person who lives by faith? God can surely tell the difference between someone who walks in darkness and someone who walks with her eyes shut. Which am I?”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“suffering borne by two is nearly joy.”
― Mark Salzman

“If I serve you in hopes of Paradise,
deny me Paradise.
If I serve thee in fear of hell,
condemn me to hell.
But if I love thee for love of thyself,
then grant me thyself.”
― Mark Salzman

“Every moment a beginning. Every moment an end.”
― Mark Salzman, Iron & Silk

“The nurse pointed out that identical twins were already clones in a sense, and Mother Emmanuel suggested that the soul to worry about belonged to the person who would have himself cloned at great expense when so many unwanted children were going hungry.”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“We hang suspended in His love.
When one heart moves the whole web trembles.”
― Mark Salzman

“In the fire of his embrace, all that was her ceased to exist. Only what was God remained. I am. The cloisterbell, the voice of Christ. He spoke again: I am. She tried to obey but was frozen in beauty, like a fly trapped in amber. She could not move. Nothing exists apart from me. Self had been an illusion, a dream. God dreaming.”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“She fell upward into brilliance, where all suffering was released.”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“In the beginning we all feel a bit like imposters in our capes and veils and being called 'sister'. But don't worry about it -- just act like you think a nun should when you're not sure what to do, and you'll find that through grace and love you become one.”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“This book," he began, "is very, very unsuitable." He paused, then went on. "In fact, in my whole life, I have never read or even imagined something so unsuitable." Here he stopped, still staring at me. He held the book up slightly and pointed at it with his chin. "May I keep it?”
― Mark Salzman, Iron & Silk

“She knew that it was better to have a dream and pay a price for it than to be lukewarm. - regarding St. Teresa of Avila”
― Mark Salzman

“I don't like being talked into things by ungraceful people.”
― Mark Salzman

“Our world cannot be complete without you, and without hearing what you have to say. True justice cannot exist without compassion; compassion cannot exist without understanding. But no one will understand you unless you speak, and are able to speak clearly (Sister Janet to the students, page 155).”
― Mark Salzman, True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall

“I, on the other hand, hoped Ava would never grow up. In my eyes, the fact that she didn’t yet know what words meant, and had no concept of herself as something distinct from anything else, made her the greatest show on earth.”
― Mark Salzman, The Man in the Empty Boat

“That's not gon fu." We stared at each other for a long time, then he raised on eybrow. "I could fix it, if you wanted." I must have nodded, because then he asked me if I could chi ku, eat bitter, the Chinese expression meaning to endure suffering. Lying, I said yes. Then he asked me if I was afraid of pain. Lying again, I said no. "You want?" he asked. "I want,
" I said, and became his student.”
― Mark Salzman, Iron & Silk

“... "She said that no matter how many times we hear what it costs to follow Christ, we're still shocked when the bill comes, and we wonder all over again if we can pay it. If we make an act of faith then, it counts more than on the days when we feel sure.”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“Sometimes I wish I could put my whole life on pause...just make everything stop for a while so I can figure shit out.”
― Mark Salzman, True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall

“...trying to establish the boundary between an irresistible impulse and an impulse not resisted was like trying to determine when twilight ended and dusk began.”
― Mark Salzman