introspection

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

Deep down I think I may be just like everyone else. And do you know what, Harry?""No sir.""That bothers me.

Growing a business requires that we look at ourselves and change the way we make decisions.

The reason I'm attracted to the light of Scripture is because there's another side of me that is dark. The reason I am interested in men of peace is because I'm not like them and would like to be. I'm not someone in real life who turns the other cheek.

Was this what the city would look like when knowledge was no longer enough? When the desire to turn inward, surrendering entirely to one's own private world of nonresistance, overwhelmed, like creeping ivy, our desire to know worlds beyond it?

If the whole universe can be found in our own body and mind, this is where we need to make our inquires. We all have the answers within ourselves, we just have not got in touch with them yet. The potential of finding the truth within requires faith in ourselves.

_while the outside world was full of danger, I knew my interior. I was certain that I could oust an intruder there.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.

True peace is not found in external circumstances, but within ones own heart.

How they are all about, these gentlemenIn chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,Like night around their order's star and gemAnd growing ever darker, stony-faced,And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but proppedHigh by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped,Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles:How they surround each one of these who stoppedTo read and contemplate the objects d'art,Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours.Whit exquisite decorum they allow usA life of whose dimensions we seem sureAnd which they cannot grasp. They were aliveTo bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature,That is to be of darkness and to strive.

Across the centuries the moral systems from medival chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment.But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today's world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act than the choice of an erotic partner.This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other's commitment.Today there are fewer norms that guide that way. Today's technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.

We may end up with a life deferred by the business of its own collection.

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

If four of you are playing hide and seek you'll only ever find the other three. For you are already right here. So what on earth is it that you're looking for? You are the very thing that you seek.

It's raining outside. How did you get here? And how did you get to be twenty-eight?

Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him very unhappy.