Stepheni

“Listen, do we still have that Poème de l'extase? Put it on, if you can find it. Put it on loud. His music sounds like I think – sometimes. Has that far off cosmic itch. Divinely fouled up. All fire and air. The first time I heard it I played it over and over. Couldn’t shut it off. It was like a bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows. For weeks I went about it in a trance. Something had happened to me. Now this sounds crazy, but it’s true. Every time a thought seized me a little door would open inside my chest, and there, in his comfy little nest sat a bird, the sweetest gentlest bird imaginable. ‘Think it out!’ he would chirp. ‘Think it out to the end!’ And I would, by God. Never any effort involved. … Like an étude gliding off a glacier....”
― Henry Miller, Nexus

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
― Simone Weil

“God never sends suffering. Never. It is never "God's will" that we should suffer. God would like us not to suffer. But since the world brings suffering, and since God refuses to use His almighty power and treat us as foolish children, He aligns Himself with us, goes into Auschwitz with us, is devastated by 9/11 with us, and draws us with Him through it all into fulfillment. This is a high price to pay for our human freedom, but it is worth it. To be mere automatons for whom God arranges the world to cause us no suffering would mean we never have a self. We could not make choices.”
― Wendy Beckett

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life