Secret Friends Quotes

“Only later – much, much later, and after losing all hope and undergoing a seemingly interminable Dark Night of the Soul – would Louie begin to see how Shah’s own work tied in with others. Not only among Sufis, nor in the general fields of spirituality and mysticism, nor in the work of Shah’s own family, friends of Shah, and friends of friends of Shah, and people who quoted people quoting Shah, but in diverse fields and in the town’s marketplace, mucky alleyways and smoke-clouded taverns of everyday life. That was a whole new vista, a continent beyond Shah’s own island – vast, exotic, and apparently self-contained as it had been, and yet not all and everything. Looking back, this wonderful caravanserai had been a very necessary, and much loved, step or two along the way.”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“°I quite distinctly heard you mulling it over, and my own ears seldom deceive me. But anyway, that’s beside the point. The reason that you are kept waiting – and this is just one “for instance” out of many other possible examples – is that what you see and experience is a reflection in the outer world of you keeping yourself and others waiting. It’s as if a mirror had been held up to your own face. Please excuse the vernacular, but if you really had your shit together as you think you have, Louie, then you wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. It’s as simple – and yet currently difficult – as that.°”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul