Carrie Newcomer > Quotes

“A dog is grateful for what is, which I am finding to be the soundest kind of wisdom and very good theology.”
― Carrie Newcomer

“Every night before I go to sleep I say out loud three things that I am grateful for, all the significant, insignificant, extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life. It is s small practice and humble, and yet, I find I sleep better holding what lightens and softens my life every so briefly at the end of the day.”
― Carrie Newcomer, A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays

“Something good happened to my writing when stopped being afraid to do something simple, for the fear that people might think I couldn’t do something more complex. Don’t be confused by the word simple. Simple is not easy, it is clear voiced, and fearlessly elegant.”
― Carrie Newcomer

“Dear heart, we embrace the song and the story and all our gifts because the world has such great need, and because the world exceedingly rejoices, and because there is no sadder thing than to leave this world having never really shown up.”
― Carrie Newcomer, A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays

“A Permeable Life is about what presses out from the heart, what comes in at a slant and what shimmers below the surface of things. To live permeably is to be open-hearted and audacious, to risk showing up as our truest self, and embracing a willingness to be astonished.”
― Carrie Newcomer, A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays

“There are some questions, there are some answers, the simple ones, the most important ones, that cannot be approached or even seen, until we go out looking for something else entirely.”
― Carrie Newcomer, A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays

“Never doubt or question the power of love or one woman with a shovel.”
― Carrie Newcomer

“Our culture reasons that because we fell there is not enough time, we should increase our pace, multitask, and fit more into our already overbooked days. But even though it is counterintuitive to popular wisdom, perhaps the more effective response to the limits of time is to live more fully in the moment, to savor it and expand it.”
― Carrie Newcomer, A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays

“There are those who would tell us that we are divided and there are no bridges. There are those who would say we are not intimately connected body, spirit and bone to one another...There are those who would say, “You are nothing like me..."

And yet, here we are with the same branching patterns in our very body and bones. Here we are, rocking and cooing to new babies, weeping into our hands with loss, laughing so hard we have to hold our sides to catch our breath, yawning at the end of a busy day, wondering at how life passes so surely and always too quickly. Here we are, singing the songs that can only be sung by one aching heart, and singing the songs that must be sung together and were never meant to be sung alone.

Yes, and yet here we are, looking at the evening sun with our hearts expanding knowing there is more we feel than can ever be said in words. Here we are in a moment of awe and wonder, and I am a part of you, and you are a part of me.”
― Carrie Newcomer

“God walks 'round in muddy boots, sometimes rags and that's the truth. You can't always tell but sometimes you just know. " From Geodes”
― Carrie Newcomer

“But miracles do happen, every shining now and then. If not now, if not now, tell me when. From "If Not Now ”
― Carrie Newcomer