Annie

“What could my work [as an artist] ever mean to this man? A kind touch of my hand in a moment of fear or pain would have been more in his service than the endeavour of my whole lifetime. This incontrovertible fact stuck in my craw for weeks … he remains in my mind, central to my thoughts about my life. And to my recognition of limitation. In the range of my character at any given moment, I have acted in the only way it seemed to be that I could have acted. This in no way means that I have done what was right; only what was possible for me … It takes kindness to forgive oneself for one’s life.”
― Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist

“Isn't that a kind of prayer? The care and maintenance of the web of our noticing, the paying heed?”
― Kathleen Jamie, Findings

“Let us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible handwriting….here we have copied out fine passages from the classics;…here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink.”
― Virginia Woolf, Granite and Rainbow: Essays

“The books are advancing silently, innocently through my house. There is no way I can stop them.”
― Carlos María Domínguez, The House of Paper