Rob Brezsny > Quotes

“All of us need to be in touch with a mysterious, tantalizing source of inspiration that teases our sense of wonder and goads us on to life’s next adventure.”
― Rob Brezsny

“Your face is true and your hair is perfect and I love you. You make boats in my dreams and you speak without words and I love you. Your fears unnerve me and your questions amuse me and I love you. I love you not only for who you are, but for the interesting person I become when I’m with you. I say I love you and love you and love you until the words become the constant song of your voice in my head and the original ache of memory in my soul. I love you more than life and death, more than everything that’s in between the light and the dark. Do you believe me? Try harder. Do you believe me now? I’m always with you, which is why I know you will never abandon yourself.”
― Rob Brezsny

“You need to evade every influence that tends to keep you frozen in the past. ”
― Rob Brezsny

“Imagine the people you fear and dislike as pivotal characters in a fascinating and ultimately redemptive plot that will take years or even lifetimes for the Divine to elaborate.”
― Rob Brezsny

“Imagine that the whole world belongs to you. The birch trees in New Hampshire's White Mountains are yours, and so are the cirrus clouds in the western sky at dusk and the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii's big island.

You own everything, my dear sovereign - the paintings in all the museums of the world, as well as the internet and the wild horses and the roads. Please take good care of it all, OK? Be an enlightened monarch who treats your domain with reverent responsibility. And make sure you also enjoy the full measure of fun that comes with such mastery. Glide through life as if all of creation is yearning to honor and entertain you.”
― Rob Brezsny

“The only real voyage consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes; in seeing the universe through the eyes of another, one hundred others-in seeing the hundred universes that each of them sees.
Marcel Proust, translated by Kiyotesong”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so it can hold evermore wonders. -Andrew Harvey”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“Most of us can manage no more than a narrow little obsession with a particular human who we mistakenly imagine can satisfy our gargantuan yearning for the real, primordial thing.”
― Rob Brezsny, The Televisionary Oracle

“Anthropologists say that in every culture in history, children have played the game hide and seek.”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“It is noted that from 1967 to 1995 essays on negative emotions far outnumbered those on positive emotions in the psychological literature. The ratio was 21:1. Even those supreme perpetrators of pop nihilism, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have a better ratio than psychological literature. They average 12 negative stories to every one that might be construed to be non-negative. Many of their non-negative stories, however, cover success in sports and entertainment.

I demand that the purveyors of despair who pretend to be dispassionate observes of the human condition go ahead and disclose that the 10 most beautiful words in the English languages are chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, and tranquil; that Java sparrows prefer the music of Back over that of Schoenberg; that math experts have determined there are 1/96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes; that the Inuit term for making love is translated as ‘laughing together in bed;' and that according to Buckminster Fuller, “pollution is nothing but resources we’re not harvesting.”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“Quoting geneticists, Guy Murcia says we’re all family. You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is further removed than your fiftieth cousin. Murcia also describes out kinship though an analysis of how deeply we share the air. With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and-owing to the wind’s ceaseless circulation- over a year’s time you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as everyone who ever lived. (The Seven Mysteries of Life)”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“Everyone who believes in the devil is the devil.”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“The Sun, each second, transforms four million tons of itself into light, giving itself over to become energy that we, with every meal, partake of. For four million years, humans have been feasting on the Sun’s energy stored in the form of wheat or reindeer.
Brian Swimme”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions (happy is boring, evil is interesting) about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don’t view peace of mind as a threat to their creative power often believe that it’s a rare commodity attained through dumb luck….It’s possible to define a more supple variety of happiness that does not paralyze the will or sap ambition….the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident.”
― Rob Brezsny

“Kaohinani is a Hawaiian word meaning “gatherer of beautiful things.”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“Evil is boring. Cynicism is pointless. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Hopelessness is self-indulgent. On the other hand: Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Chronic ecstasy is a learnable skill.”
― Rob Brezsny

“Now try these Drivetime talismans on for size: organized chaos … wild discipline … reverent blasphemy … self-effacing grandiosity … fanatic moderation … selfish gifts … twisted calm … garish elegance … insane poise … ironic sincerity … blasphemous prayers … orgiastic lucidity … aggressive sensitivity … convoluted simplicity … macho feminism. Homework Discuss what is wetter than water, stronger than love, and more exotic than trust.”
― Rob Brezsny, The Televisionary Oracle

“The fisherman of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or ‘feeling-thinking’ to define language that speaks the truth. Eduardo Galeano”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings