Allen Levi > Quotes

“They agreed enthusiastically on the virtue of holding printed books over scrolling through digital ones. “Those damned devices are killing little dinosaurs like me,” Tony lamented.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“How is it, Theo wondered, that a piece of paper - a letter, a photo, a ticket stub, a sketch, a painting - is suddenly transformed by placing it in four bits of wood beneath a pane of glass? What does it mean that we place permanent boundaries around transient moments? What does it say of humankind that we take such trouble to freeze specific memories, that we devote such energy to capturing and preserving the "minute particulars" of our lives?”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“She understood the difference between a "troubled mind" and "troublemaker”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“A gold leaf fell between them. Another late departure.”
― Allen Levi

“My expertise in sadness is hard earned, but I realize more and more that it is a gift. Living with sadness, accepting it, is easier than trying to pretend it isn’t there. It is another of life’s great mysteries that sadness and joy can coexist so compatibly with one another. In fact, I wonder if on this side of heaven, neither one can be complete without the other.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“Well intentioned? Entirely.
Affectionate? Unquestionably.
Heartwarming? Perhaps.
Upsetting? Possibly.
Wise? Maybe not.
"Should I send it?" Theo removed the feather and tore up the card. Maybe next year.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“Herbivores eat Brussel sprouts,
carnivores eat birds,
cashivores eat dollar bills,
and verbivores eat words.”
― Allen Levi

“Theo shook his head. 'No, my dear. Sadness might be many things, but it is rarely stupid. The good sadness, I think, is always trying to tell us something very important.”
― Allen Levi

“He once wrote that the best portion of a good person's life is the little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. […] Little. Nameless. Unremembered. I think it has never been our nature to think that way, but especially now, we like big' and 'viral' and all that.”
― Allen Levi, Theo in Golden

“This old man [Theo] will someday leave the world, knowing that, at least for one short season, he was an agent for good and that he used art not for his personal fame or advancement, but for its highest ends “to bestow… a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness, instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
― Allen Levi

“Leven met verdriet, het aanvaarden, is makkelijker dan proberen te doen alsof het er niet is. Het is een van de vele mysteries in het leven dat verdriet en vreugde naast elkaar kunnen bestaan en elkaar aanvullen. Sterker nog, ik vraag me af of het een aan deze kant van de hemel compleet kan zijn zonder het ander.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“To know who sees Him, God makes Himself unseen.”
― Allen Levi, Theo in Golden

“When we're young, we're usually too busy or self-absorbed to see it, but by the time one is almost ninety, this world has beat sadness into him quite deeply. Every week there is some tragedy or reminder to keep it alive and well.”
― Allen Levi

“The evening sun streams through stained glass to paint the sanctuary in shifting colors of red, lavender, melon, gold, and emerald, treating the room like a living canvas.”
― Allen Levi

“Baby, they's justice and they's mercy. If you not sure what to do and you gotta choose one or the other, I say always go the mercy way. If you make a mistake, make it for mercy. Bad mercy don't hurt nearly like bad justice, and always remember the Eye of God can see.”
― Allen Levi

“A meal, a book, and a nap seemed the perfect trifecta for the afternoon. And so it was.”
― Allen Levi, Theo in Golden

“Sadness might be many things, but it is rarely stupid.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“I'm certain that some of the people see themselves clearly for the first time when they look at your drawings of them”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“He had the imagination of a poet. But he had, too, the eyes and mind of a connoisseur. Though he was easily interested in many things, he was keenly interested in a particular few.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“Sadness may be many things, but it is rarely stupid. The good sadness, I think, is always trying to tell us something very important.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“He holds firmly to the belief that the most important (and formative and effortless) thing a parent can do for a baby is to gaze into his or her face, to hold him or her close and engage the eyes. Could anything be simpler? Is anything more profound? Does anything more deeply change parent and child? I wonder if, like newborn children, we go through our entire lives looking for a face, longing for a particular gaze that calms and fills us, that loves and welcomes us, that recognizes and runs to greet us.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

“His soul caught its breath at the sight, like a swimmer coming up from the depths. For that moment he could separate beauty from his grief, and celebrate, if only ambivalently, that there was still a world of goodness apart from, or bigger than, his aching loneliness.
Above and behind the aerial ballet of bird flight, the clouds began to robe themselves in color, as if the sky too, was fighting for the heart of this wounded man. The slow, subtle changes, akin to tilting a cluster of opal beneath light, in which one tint dissolves into another, hinted that the great expanse overhead was alive, a thriving nest of angels of hope.
The sheer wonderment of the moment, the wings of fifty thousand birds, and the intoxicating surplus of beauty, overwhelmed him, as though a rope that had been pulled taut that tied him to the darkness of Tita’s death had snapped and fallen powerless to the ground.
Theo’s eyes filled with tears again - weariness? Hope? Forgiveness? Surrender? - as he laid his head back and looked into the open sky above him.
A single star caught his eye.
A tiny glimmer.
Searching from horizon to horizon, he confirmed that it was the first and only star in the sky.‘Looking back on that moment, he realized that in the time between the quarter hour before sunset and the star of dusk, somehow…this splintered soul had begun to heal. It would happen in fits and starts. It would be a healing that would never, at least in this life, be total or final. But it was the moment when the fever broke for him.
In every place that he ever lived after that, he insisted that his home be within walking distance of a river with a view to the west, and a bench…
And, on many days…he would check the exact time of sunset to ensure that he would be punctual for his date with a ten-year-old girl whose laughter was a murmuration and whose memory was a single star, the brightest in all the sky.”
― Allen Levi

“How about another cup of coffee?"
They returned to their chairs and, for the next couple of hours, shared a sprawling, meandering conversation, in which a random word or phrase would trigger another story and another, ad infinitum. Theo offered more than once to leave so that Asher could work, but the artist asserted his independence, claiming that, as his own boss, he could work whenever he wanted.
"This conversation is my work today," he said.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden: A Novel

“En dan is er nog de mooie mogelijkheid dat verdriet kan uitgroeien tot grootse liefde als je er goed voor zorgt. Verdriet kan ons bitter maken, of juist wijs. De keuze is aan ons.”
― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden