Robb Todd > Robb's Quotes

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E.B. White

“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what's going on, but that there's something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“Abandon hope.”
― Pema Chodron

“As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never
learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find
compassion. ”
― Pema Chödrön

“The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes. ”
― Pema Chodron

“When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.”
― Pema Chödrön, Practicing Peace in Times of War

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
― Pema Chödrön

“Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, "May I have permission to go into battle with you?" Fear said, "Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission." Then the young warrior said, "How can I defeat you?" Fear replied, "My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power." In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear. ”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is.”
― William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals

“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Silence, yes, but what silence! For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I hate writing, I love having written.”
― Dorothy Parker

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“It’s not what happens to people on the page; it’s about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind.”
― Gordon Lish

“Don't have stories; have sentences.”
― Gordon Lish

“Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”
― Albert Einstein

“And do you agree that the mornings when we appreciated each other might have been better than the mornings we loved each other?”
― Chloe Caldwell, Legs Get Led Astray

“I was having a wonderful time and the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I don't know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once—I suppose that only means that it had been happening for a long time.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― Joseph Campbell

“There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.”
― Lydia Davis

“I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.”
― Lydia Davis

“The big guys who ran things didn't want you thinking or feeling. It slowed down production. They wanted you scared and working so you wouldn't bump up against the truth--life could be fun. Yup, they wanted you scared. They wanted you grim. They wanted you madly cranking out Barbie dolls or Post Toasties or Xerox, or they wanted you overworked and underpaid at teaching so you could at least feel smart, and they wanted you to keep having kids so you'd have to keep working at whatever job you were stuck in and not have time to think or feel or, if you did, you certainly wouldn't have time to do anything about it, or even get close to the big fun, the fun that belonged only to them. And then they wanted your kids to hop on the same treadmill.”
― Bill Ripley, Prisoners

“The pressures were wrong. There was just enough money and not enough time.”
― Renata Adler, Speedboat

“Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.”
― Renata Adler, Speedboat