Vickie Mathis > Vickie's Quotes

“More often than not, we want him to have fairy wings and spread fairy dust and shine like a precious little star, dispensing nothing but good times on everyone, like some kind of hybrid of Tinker Bell and Aladdin’s Genie. But the God of the Bible, this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is a pillar of fire and a column of smoke.”
― Matt Chandler

“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
― Joan Didion

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”
― J.D. Salinger

“That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.”
― Tim O'Brien

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
― Victor Hugo

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I always wondered why survivors understood other survivors so well. Why, even if the details of our attacks vary, survivors can lock eyes and get it without having to explain. Perhaps it is not the particulars of the assault itself that we have in common, but the moment after; the first time you are left alone. Something slipping out of you. Where did I go. What was taken. It is terror swallowed inside silence. An unclipping from the world where up was up and down was down.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“...It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect it’s presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media. They are easily manipulated by demagogues, pacified by entertainers, and exploited by anyone who has something to sell.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Classic Work On How To Achieve Happiness: The Psychology of Happiness

“When not preoccupied with our selves, we actually have a chance to expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Classic Work On How To Achieve Happiness: The Psychology of Happiness

“Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient”
― Marilynne Robinson

“To value one another is our greatest safety, and to indulge in fear and contempt is our gravest error.”
― Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things: Essays

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed