Jan Brattain > Jan's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old—or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs: Poems

“But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him.

The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind.

Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs: Poems

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”
― Robert Lynd

“Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

“If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!”
― Pablo Picasso

“One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.”
― Dale Carnegie

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
― John Steinbeck

“Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.”
― Lewis Carroll

“You will go. And you will live a good life with my people. But bad things will happen. They always do. And when they do, you must not blame yourself. You must enjoy life in spite of bad things.”
― K.B. Laugheed, The Spirit Keeper

“Don't be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts.”
― Hopi Proverb

“Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.”
― Vine Deloria Jr.

“I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more.”
― Chief Joseph

“If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come. If we never wonder, knowledge will never find us.”
― Grandfather

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”
― Josh Billings

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”
― Bob Dylan

“May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.”
― Bob Dylan

“Our time together feels like a storm, like wild wind and rain, like something too big to handle but too powerful to escape. It blows around me and it tangles my hair, leaves wate on my face, makes me know that I am alive, alive, alive.”
― Ally Condie, Matched

“Even far away, I know it's her by the way her dark hair tangles with the wind and how she stands on the red rocks of the Carving. She's more beautiful than snow.”
― Ally Condie, Crossed

“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The only thing we can't buy more of is time." she said.
"And dodo birds. We can't buy any more of them. they're extinct. And dinosaurs.”
― Dean Koontz, Frankenstein Collection

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”
― Jean Cocteau

“In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
― Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Wither

“Wait for you? Not likely. I've always had to run ahead of you and show you the way.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“We are pack!”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“ENTER THIS DESERTED HOUSE
But please walk softly as you do.
Frogs dwell here and crickets too.
Ain't no ceiling, only blue
Jays dwell here and sunbeams too.
Floors are flowers - take a few.
Ferns grow here and daisies too.
Whoosh, swoosh - too-whit, too-woo,
Bats dwell here and hoot owls too.
Ha-ha-ha,hee-hee,hoo-hoooo,
Gnomes dwell here and goblins too.
And my child, I thought you knew
I dwell here...and so do you.”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends