“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” ― Simone Weil Fear. It keeps us. Claims us. Owns us. There’s a line in a famous song that I love: “I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything.” This is how many people behave when
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The world looks different after tragedy. With recent tragedies in the news, it’s common to feel afraid, but also to feel afraid to express things that don’t fit the acceptable response. When it’s personal experience, it’s tough. For the thinkers, artists and sensitive people, hearing about even distant death and suffering can make us need to retreat from the world. Yet when distant tragedy strikes, we can
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Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. – Donald Miller I used to love Don Miller. I’ve had many writing heroes: Hemingway. Anne Frank. Alex Haley. But after Blue Like Jazz, I felt like Don really got me. He’d written what I was
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Say I was just a little bit obsessed with writing this book. Would that be so bad? Maybe we have to become saturated with it, like a painter or an actor, to really convince anyone it’s worth their time. I suppose the obvious (and well-documented) problem with this is what such an obsession tends to lead to. Fact is, with writers
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This morning the last one in September, I woke early to finish an edit and got sucked into simply reading. As I read, I listened to the quiet house waking and the sounds of the day starting. At first there was nothing, then a twittering songbird, whistling briefly until silence again. Then a distant crow, and eventually, the kids’ on
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