Katy Chickels > Katy's Quotes

“Do not confuse the 'subconscious' with the 'unconscious', whose attributes include courage as well as true knowledge. A great deal of confusion has resulted from the use of these two terms as synonymous. I am using the term 'subconscious' here to stand for material -desires, anxieties, fears, hopes - repressed by the conscious mind as it deals with the outer realities of life. 'Unconscious' means the absic energy of life, that area of being beyond the ego. The subconscious, despite its hidden qualities, is really an extension of the ego. In a sense, it embodies the ego's absolute domain, that realm where it makes no compromises with reality. Because it does not concern itself with consequences the subconscious will walk you in front of a truck to avoid an unpleasant conversation. The unconscious on the other hand, balances and supports us by joining us to the great surge of life beyond our individual selves. The Hanged Man in the Major Arcana gives us a powerful image of this vital connection.”
― Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot

“At Gayhead point, I wondered what it would feel like to fall.
If you raised your arms above your head like you were diving and you aimed true for the waves, wouldn’t you experience perfect freedom? That the body would land broken on the rocks below didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t be there for the landing. So you would experience only that single moment of clean, pure freedom and grace.

But then, that would be it. There would be no chance to remember that feeling and strive, for the rest of your life, to feel it again. Or to surpass it. Or to pull somebody aside and tell them what it had felt like.
There would be nothing. It reminded me of when I wanted to find out about the universe and I’d asked my father, “What was there before there was everything?”
He said, “There was nothing.”
“But what is nothing?”
“Nothing is nothing,” he said.

It was so difficult to picture. Because wasn’t nothing something too? Wasn’t the thick silence and blackness of nothing actually a place you could be?
Son, I’m tired. Please just go outside and play.
Is that what death was like?
But no, it wouldn’t be “like” anything.
I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness.
At Christmas, the floor could be spread with gifts, but I would be concerned only with what I didn’t get. Not pouting because I didn’t get a sweater vest, but wondering, What would have been in the box that isn’t here?
My brother inspired awe in me because he wasn’t there anymore.
I loved my mother most when she was locked behind her door, writing. Because I couldn’t have her. And because I never hugged my father, it was his embrace I sought most of all.
Where there is nothing, absolutely anything is possible. And this thrilled me. It gave me hope.
In a way, if I wasn’t having a happy childhood right now, I could have one later.”
― Augusten Burroughs, A Wolf at the Table

“I have met many minds able to store and translate a pregnantly large amount of information, yet they haven't an ounce of talent for wisdom or the appreciation of passion.”
― Kurt Cobain

“Look on the bright side, suicide
Lost eyesight I'm on your side
Angel left wing, right wing, broken wing
Lack of iron and/or sleeping
Protector of the kennel
Ecto-plasma, Ecto-skeletal
Obituary birthday
Your scent is still here in my place of recovery!" ~”
― Kurt Cobain

“I like the comfort in knowing that women are generally superior and naturally less violent than men. I like the comfort in knowing that women are the only future in rock and roll.”
― Kurt Cobain, Journals

“I like the comfort in knowing that the Afro American invented rock and roll yet has only been rewarded or awarded for their accomplishments when conforming to the white man's standards. I like the comfort in knowing that the Afro American has once again been the only race that has brought a new form of original music to this decade: hip-hop/rap.”
― Kurt Cobain, Journals

“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.”
― Augusten Burroughs

“By the late '60s society was no longer afraid of witches, because people no longer believed in them. They were already worshipping the newfangled office computers and LED watches. Therefore, TV executives could create sexy witches and mischievious witches, not to mention male witches they called warlocks and put them in front of the nation.
Except it seemed that people really did believe in witches, which was a little bit spooky and threatening, so the cute witches also had to be made powerless. Even though every rational person knew witches weren't real, a primal, tiny voice asked, Were they?”
― Augusten Burroughs, Toil & Trouble

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
― Tom Robbins

“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”
― Tom Robbins

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.”
― Tom Robbins

“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it's usually too late, we've used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It's hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.”
― Tom Robbins

“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid - but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.”
― Tom Robbins

“A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“There is no such thing as a weird human being, It's just that some people require more understanding than others.”
― Tom Robbins

“So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.”
― Tom Robbins

“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans.”
― Tom Robbins

“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”
― tom robbins

“Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker