John Bowen > Quotes

“Dahl had already informed them the house's diesel generator was out of action, so they had brought their own portable generator, which was just as well, because without it the hilltop would have been darker than Batman's armpit.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“Change is ceaseless, relentless, and you must be supple enough to accommodate it in all its guises, because if you cannot, it will destroy you. Your existence will become a cycle of losses; a life spent mourning moments which are inevitably fleeting. Follow this course for too long and you risk becoming divorced from the world, a man out of time. I have learnt to welcome change, find comfort in progress.”
― John Bowen, Vessel

“Circumstances change, and with it often one's perspective follows suit.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“Death is sad, but to those closest to the deceased it is greater than that, it is a catastrophe, an off-the-Richter-scale, ground-shaking earthquake, a gale force fuck hurricane, a three-story-high rolling tsunami that knocks you flat, sweeps you away and strips you bare.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“I found Confucianism particularly arresting, and the ideas and ideals it espoused of great merit, the way it viewed fairness and respect as humanitarian values, untethered from the divine and the holy. Justice, knowledge and integrity pursued, not because God demanded them, but because they held intrinsic worldly value for the individual, family and society alike.”
― John Bowen, Vessel

“We don't really understand most of what's happening in the cosmos. Is there any afterlife? Who knows?"   - David Eagleman”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“It was all so ordered, so tidy, almost as if her dad's intruder was the world's only chronically afflicted OCD burglar.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“It is, but there's more than one definition of family. I would argue people can forge bonds far stronger than blood. Shared beliefs, shared experiences, loyalty, obligation, duty and love… These things bind people powerfully too.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“Secrets have weight, carrying them takes a toll.”
― John Bowen, Crow's Cottage

“Circumstances change, and with it often one's perspective follows suit. Carefully,”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“You have to accept that everything is borrowed, because whether it's the living obsessed with making contact with the spirits of loved ones they've lost, or spirits unwilling to let go of the living, refusing to cross over to wherever it is our essence ultimately goes, it becomes a distraction from the real business of living, looking and moving forward.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“To say he was growing to really dislike the man was a bit like saying slugs weren’t big fans of salt.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“The memories our minds store are fragile, prone to lapses and inaccuracies. Dates, names, faces and places all may fade or be forgotten entirely as the years fall behind us, but the memories we store in our hearts…? These are surprisingly tenacious.”
― John Bowen, Vessel

“The past, the future? In the end, what good were they really? One’s forever slipped your grasp; the other’s less than a promise. The present, though? The present is everything. It’s where choice lives. It’s where you do your living, right here, right now.”
― John Bowen, Vessel

“Loneliness is a crowded room?”
― John Bowen, Crow's Cottage

“It's not like I planned to have a heart attack, you know? I wasn't thinking to myself, 'Hmm, you know what James? Today seems like the perfect afternoon for a myocardial infarction.”
― John Bowen, Where the Dead Walk

“found Confucianism particularly arresting, and the ideas and ideals it espoused of great merit, the way it viewed fairness and respect as humanitarian values, untethered from the divine and the holy. Justice, knowledge and integrity pursued, not because God demanded them, but because they held intrinsic worldly value for the individual, family and society alike.”
― John Bowen, Vessel