Elena > Elena's Quotes

“I have no advice for anybody; except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time, and how that is beautiful, and has poetry inside. Even places you hate.”
― Jeff Buckley

“There is no good singing, there is only present and absent.”
― Jeff Buckley

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“I told you I wanted to live in a world in which the antidote to shame is not honor, but honesty.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“We have not yet heard enough, if anything, about the female gaze. About the scorch of it.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“psychoanalysis gets interesting when it shifts the focus from making us more intelligible to ourselves to helping us become more curious about how strange we really are. And so, I would argue, does art.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning

“I sit before flowers
hoping they will train me in the art
of opening up

I stand on mountain tops believing
that avalanches will teach me to let go

I know
nothing

but I am here to learn.”
― Shane Koyczan

“But one of the hallmarks of emotional maturity is to recognize the validity of multiple realities and to understand that people think, feel, and react differently. Often we behave as if “closeness” means “sameness.”
― Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships

“Culture and education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“To listen with an open heart and ask questions to better help us understand the other person is a spiritual exercise, in the truest sense of the word.”
― Harriet Lerner, Why Won’t You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts

“I want to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

“We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives.”
― Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self

“Because the symptoms and emotions associated with trauma can be extreme, most of us (and those close to us) will recoil and attempt to repress these intense reactions. Unfortunately, this mutual denial can prevent us from healing. In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation. Denial is so common in our culture that it has become a cliché.”
― Peter A. Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

“Boredom is the mind’s scar tissue.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want.”
― Madonna

“Sensitivity isn't being wimpy. It's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom.”
― Jeff Buckley

“Grace is what matters, in anything... That's a quality I admire quite greatly. It keeps you from reaching for the gun too quickly, keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It keeps you alive and it keeps you open for more understanding.”
― Jeff Buckley

“I love anything that haunts me...and never leaves”
― Jeff Buckley

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.”
― Rumi