David Yaffe > Quotes

“Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl,” she later said. “Most of my best work came out of it. If you get rid of the demons and the disturbing things, then the angels fly off, too. There is the possibility, in that mire, of an epiphany.”
― David Yaffe, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

“to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Nietzsche”
― David Yaffe, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

“Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl,” she”
― David Yaffe, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

“Albert Camus, from Leonard Cohen’s reading list, makes an appearance here, from Notebooks, 1935–1951: “What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country … we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. This is the most obvious benefit of travel. At that moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being.” (emphasis added)”
― David Yaffe, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

“I always think poetry is kind of like cracking sunflowers with your nails to get the meat out. It’s a lot of work for very little reward, in most cases. Even the hallowed ones among them. I didn’t see that it had any kind of great pertinence”
― David Yaffe, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

“If I passed a thief, I’d know he was a thief. In level-four Buddhism, your sixth sense comes in. The sixth sense is why the animals ran through the hills in the tsunami. All of your senses are incredibly sharpened. If you’re an animal and you see that birds are not moving in their normal pattern and sound different, you can probably hear the wave coming in the wrong direction. It’s a coordination of all your senses. I think that’s what was happening that time. I wasn’t reading anything at the time, but that was not a mental breakdown but the arrival of the sixth”
― David Yaffe, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell