Christy Baker > Christy's Quotes

“Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.”
― Michelle Obama

“Women endure entire lifetimes of these indignities—in the form of catcalls, groping, assault, oppression. These things injure us. They sap our strength. Some of the cuts are so small they’re barely visible. Others are huge and gaping, leaving scars that never heal. Either way, they accumulate. We carry them everywhere, to and from school and work, at home while raising our children, at our places of worship, anytime we try to advance.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”
― Michelle Obama

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“If you can see a thing whole," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you loose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."
"That's all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon-I don't want it! But I am not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, 'O lovely!' I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don't give a hoot for eternity."
"It's nothing to do with eternity," said Shevek, grinning, a thin shaggy man of silver and shadow. "All you have to do to see life as a whole is to see it as mortal. I'll die, you'll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun's going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?"
"Ah! your talk, your damned philosophy!"
"Talk? It's not talk. It's not reason. It's hand's touch. I touch the wholeness, I hold it. Which is moonlight, which is Takver? How shall I fear death? When I hold it, when I hold in my hands the light-"
"Don't be propertarian," Takver muttered.
"Dear heart, don't cry."
"I'm not crying. You are. Those are your tears."
"I'm cold. The moonlight's cold."
"Lie down."
A great shiver went through his body as she took him in her arms.
"I'm afraid, Takver," he whispered.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty and kind but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft, there's a genuine violence softness and kindness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be. ”
― Tony Kushner, Perestroika

“All dreams reflect inborn creativity and ability to face and solve life's problems.”
― Jeremy Taylor

“For every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others. And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Sometimes it is hard not to say "God forgive God." Sometimes, it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn't. He crucified Him.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Is it rational to believe in a bad God? Anyway, in a God so bad as all that? The Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile?”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.”
― Elie Wiesel

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
― Julian of Norwich

“The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation---in the shadow of a dim delight.

The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.

At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

“Stop telling people to reconcile, when you have no idea what it took for them to break free.”
― Zara Hairston

“All knowledge is worth having.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“That which yields is not always weak.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“Love as thou wilt”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

“Happiness is the highest form of wisdom.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Mercy

“Yes my lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love.

It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss.

Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Curse

“Love child!" What else? You will find it and lose it, again and again. And with each finding and each loss, you will become more than before. What you make of it is yours to choose.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart