Susan

“I see the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory a slippery hold.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“Then Wang Lung turned to the woman and looked at her for the first time. She had a square, honest face, a short, broad nose with large black nostrils, and her mouth was wide as a gash in her face. Her eyes were small and of a dull black in color, and were filled with some sadness that was not clearly expressed. It was a face that seemed habitually silent and unspeaking, as though it could not speak if it would. She bore patiently Wang Lung’s look, without embarrassment or response, simply waiting until he had seen her. He saw that it was true there was not beauty of any kind in her face—a brown, common, patient face. But there were no pock-marks on her dark skin, nor was her lip split. In her ears he saw his rings hanging, the gold-washed rings he had bought, and on her hands were the rings he had given her. He turned away with secret exultation. Well, he had his woman!”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

“The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“Igor Stravinsky said that “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself.” I’d come across the quote years before, but I only now got it. When water is confined in a narrow space like a tube or a ravine, it will rush forward with power; when it has infinite room to expand, it becomes a puddle. The same thing happens with our creative”
― Jennifer Fulwiler, One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both