T.M Cicinski > Quotes

“The sun is the father of all things on the earth. Just as the river is the mother which protects and nurtures us, the sun nourishes us too. He punishes us also, but he does so to strengthen us.”
― T.M Cicinski, From Whence The Rivers Run

“The best of people are not those who buy flowers and give them to their loved ones to be placed in pretty vases on bedside tables and mantelpieces. The best of people are those who grow flowers in boxes on their window sills for all those who pass by to see.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“No place which has ever once been perfect is worth the gamble of revisiting.”
― T.M Cicinski

“This land of ours is a savage place,” she thought. “It is a land of fang and claw; of fishing spear and skinner’s knife; of blood and scalding suns. Yet it is a beautiful place nonetheless. There are places in the world that are more savage, I am sure, but there can be no place more beautiful.”
― T.M Cicinski, From Whence The Rivers Run

“Perfection is not something the world has to offer.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“Look around you. A fear of living, of truly living, is the most common fear there is.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“Idalina loved the river. It was the only constant thing she knew of, except for the high mountains. People lived and died and during their lives they altered the landscape with their houses and roads. Trees were planted and cut down. The herds came and went. Yet the river flowed still as it had flowed when she was a girl and when her mother and grandmother had been girls before her and through each generation to the beginning of time.”
― T.M Cicinski, From Whence The Rivers Run

“Do not be mistaken," she said as she dressed in the blue light of morning. "You are not the man I love. You are a man I love.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“As all true gamblers know, the moods of luck, whether bad or good, are as changeable as the winds.”
― T.M Cicinski, Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore

“It is better, after all, to have a face that people want to punch, than to have one that excites no desire at all...”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“To know all, I realised then, was perhaps not to forgive all, as that fragment of popular wisdom suggested.”
― T.M Cicinski, Drifting Onward Down The Stream

“It matters not what a man was yesterday,” my grandfather told me, still speaking in a low voice. “It matters only what he is today and what he will be tomorrow.”
― T.M Cicinski, A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow

“If the bible is correct and Noah saved one pair of each of the animals we have still on earth by taking them aboard his ark, I wonder what madness made him choose to save the mosquito. That was a great foolishness on his part. After all, what purpose do they serve? The birds eat them, I suppose, but there are other insects they might eat instead, that do not bite me before they are eaten.”
― T.M Cicinski, From Whence The Rivers Run

“What is a loss of freedom when you have everything else?”
― T.M Cicinski, A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow

“People change. You choose who you go to bed with, but no-one gets to choose who they wake up with the next morning, or the morning after that, or twenty years down the line. Luck decides that for you.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“As all true gamblers know, the moods of luck, whether bad or good, are as changeable as the winds. One moment she might be with you, guiding you gently toward some distant paradise you never hoped to see; the next, she could be battering you to death against the rocks. A successful gambler therefore, the old man had said, is not one on whom luck never turns her back, but rather one who knows the moment to take their fate back from her into their own hands.”
― T.M Cicinski, Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore

“One cannot change the type of friend one has been in the past – only in the present and the future.”
― T.M Cicinski, A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow

“Men say foolish things. If we always did what men say, our lives would be hard and short.”
― T.M Cicinski, A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow

“That God, or gods existed, she had never doubted. If her husband’s death however had done anything it was to confirm to her the belief she had developed as a child, that the gods, though extant, were not worthy of worship; that by their inaction they had shown that they cared little for humanity. Probably, she had always supposed, they were too absorbed in their own lives to do anything but occasionally watch from afar as people suffered and struggled against the consequences of their inaction.”
― T.M Cicinski, From Whence The Rivers Run

“The lion,” she thought, “is very noble. There is no creature so noble. The elephant is noble too and the elands and the jaguar. But they are nothing compared to the lion. The crocodile is not noble at all. It is an old evil like the serpent in the Garden of Eden; cunning and full of malice, and even when it hunts, it does so in a way that shows no true courage. But the lion…”
She sighed.
“The lion is wonderful and all the beasts of the earth are not much beside it.”
― T.M Cicinski, From Whence The Rivers Run

“That quality, he told me, is the rarest of all – the quality of a person who thinks, without prejudice or motivation other than simply a desire to understand the world.”
― T.M Cicinski, A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow

“When a man gets to be as old as I am, one of his greatest fears begins to be that he shall one day find himself alone in the world. It is no small thing therefore, for him to be told by one he loves, that his presence is important to them.”
― T.M Cicinski, Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore

“We cannot ever change what we have done. We might as well wish to change those things that have been done to us. And if we could, then we would not be who we are or become who we must become. Everything happens for a reason. We all have a path to tread and it is not a path of our choosing.”
― T.M Cicinski, From Whence The Rivers Run

“When a man is about to die, it is would be a great sin, would it not, to waste what time he has left to him.”
― T.M Cicinski, A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow

“There was a name. That was all. A name upon a piece of paper. The beginnings of a letter, started but never finished and pushed into a drawer and then forgotten about as all old and unhappy things had been forgotten with the coming of that spring. Yet, after the name had been read, and a false seed of suspicion planted, the sun of their happiness dipped behind a bank of storm clouds and the light which had bathed them faded. It did not fade immediately. Nor in a way which was recognisable at the start. It faded in long silences and crossed arms, in questions which came from nowhere and were answered awkwardly for their strangeness. It faded in kisses avoided and tired sighs, then finally in absences and then all was passed into darkness, though neither knew it until a moment in which they both turned to look for what once they had loved, and found it was gone.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“Tomorrow is always different," he said. "Whether it will be better, however, is another thing entirely and much less certain.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“Understanding why you did a thing, he had heard it said many times, did not make it easier to do it. If anything the opposite was true.”
― T.M Cicinski, A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow

“Since God made man in his image, to understand the nature of God, we must first come to an understanding of our own nature, realising that our vices as well as our virtues are mirrored in those of God. If people are flawed, then it is because He too is flawed. And perhaps, He is in need of our understanding, as well as our live, just as they are.”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“To look back on the happiness we have already experienced, is safe. Those memories of a happy time are something that nothing can change nor take from us. The happiness of the present and future is less certain. At any moment, it can disappear...”
― T.M Cicinski, The Mind Is Its Own Place

“Remember, being brave is not always a virtue. It is better to be wise. Fewer people are hurt by that.”
― T.M Cicinski, Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore