Linda > Linda's Quotes

“The soul of place is like an invisible net --or a force field -- cast up at times from within a house, neighborhood, or landscape to draw us into its labyrinthine folds.”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“In the murky puddle of rainwater collected at the entrance of the tomb, I spied my own reflection,a dark, hatted figure against a pewter sky.”
― Linda Lappin, The Etruscan

“Beyond that door lies an unknown world...where we can become immortal if we choose”
― Linda Lappin, The Etruscan

“There was a blinding flash of magnesium and a smell of singed hair and dust. A green light flared in the boar's glass eye.”
― Linda Lappin, The Etruscan

“A deep map is a sample swatch of the multiple manifestations of the genius loci.”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“The statues carved here may be viewed as fragments of consciousness itself, or the residue of violent emotions”
― Linda Lappin, Signatures in Stone

“In the 16th century,parks and gardens were models of the cosmos and also tools for altering one's consciousness, possibly for changing one's destiny.”
― Linda Lappin, Signatures in Stone

“Entering a garden like Bomarzo was like succumbing to a dream. Every detail was intended to produce a specific effect on the mind and body, to excite and soothe the senses like a drug. To awaken the unconscious self.”
― Linda Lappin, Signatures in Stone

“The deep map configures narratives. It is a matrix of intertexual storytelling, charting our movements through the landscape.”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“What better way to read the landscape than by walking through it?”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“We are constantly immersed in a network of signs and symbols whose meaning eludes us, but which, if only we could read them, would reveal every detail of our past and even predict our future. Like anticipatory echoes, they tingle in our consciousness, building in crescendo until the event they herald becomes fully manifest. Afterwards, they linger for a time before being drowned out by a new tide of signs rushing in upon us. Such signatures are everywhere...”
― Linda Lappin, Signatures in Stone

“The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seemed filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster”
― Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979

“What cannot be said will be wept.”
― Sappho

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde