Stephanie Saldana

“Every time I confront two different versions of a story, in the end I ask myself, What is the story that I want to contain? For the early monks believed that there is no such thing as a story—we each meet the text, and who we are and the text together create a unique event. We change for it and it changes for us, the act of reading becoming an essential way of transforming ourselves. We can only bring to the text what is inside of ourselves—even if the story is a story of death, if we contain life, we will find life.”
― Stephanie Saldana, The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith

“They look so serene, those monks and nuns, so full of purpose. The Eastern legend says that the monk leaves the world to take on the cloak of a stranger, to become nobody, that he becomes a stranger among strangers, a desolate wanderer who carries the entire world within his heart. It is in this sacrifice that he is given a particular gift, to transform the entire world within himself through prayer. So he walks, alone, carrying the world within his broken body, connected to others through breath and dreams, separated from all and united to all.”
― Stephanie Saldana, The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith