Jean Hegland Quotes

Thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth So

We heard the United States had a new president, that she was arranging for a loan from the Commonwealth to bail us out. We heard the White House was burning and the National Guard was fighting the Secret Service in the streets of DC. We heard there was no water left in Los Angeles, that hordes of people were trying to walk north through the drought-ridden Central Valley. We heard that the county to the east of us still had electricity and that the Third World was rallying to send us support. And then we heard that China and Russia were at war and the US had been forgotten.

Although the Fundamentalists' predictions of Armageddon grew more intense, and everyone else complained with increasing bitterness about everything from the last of chewing gum to the closure of Redwood General Hospital, still, among most people there was an odd sense of buoyancy, a sort of surreptitious relief, the same feeling Eva and I used to have every few years when the river that flows through Redwood flooded, washing out roads and closing businesses for a day or two. We knew a flood was inconvenient and destructive At the same time we couldn't help but feel a peculiar sort of delight that something beyond us was large enough to destroy the inexorability of our routines.

The best way to keep from being a victim is to write your own terms." It

I have to admit that this notebook, with its wilderness of blank pages, seems almost more threat than gift - for what can I write here that it will not hurt to remember? You

So my sister dances and the dead house burns, and I scrawl these few last words by the light of its burning. I know I should toss this story, too, on those flames. But I am still too much a storyteller -or at least a storykeeper-still too much my father's daughter to burn these pages.

I was aghast by the betrayal those thoughts represented, by the callous creature they proved me to be.

And humanism - that transcendent vision that spans centuries and religions in its celebration of reason, responsibility, art, and examined lives - has been tossed out like old bathwater, leaving humanity naked and shivering on the dirty ground. He

Pray you now forget, and forgive: I am old and foolish,

He knows a sweep of gratitude, soft as another voice, and so wide and deep he believes he might drown in it.

I'm just a core, a kernel, a coal tucked in a bit of breathing flesh, listening to the rain. My life fills this place, no longer meager, no longer lost or stolen or waiting to begin. I drink rain and it quenches an ancient thirst.

Maybe it's true that the people who live through the times that become history's pivotal points are those least likely to understand them.

I never knew how much we consumed. it seems as if we are all appetite, as if a human being is simply a bundle of needs to drain the world. it's no wonder there are wars, no wonder the earth and water and air are polluted. it's no wonder the economy collapsed, if eva and i use so much merely to stay alive.

This body is yours. No one can ever take it from you, if only you will accept yourself, claim it again
your arms, your spine, your ribs, the small of your back. It's all yours. All this bounty, all this beauty, all this strength and grace is yours. This garden is yours. Take it back. Take it back.

Still, there's a lucidity that sometimes comes in that moment when you find yourself looking at the world through your tears, as if those tears served as a lens to clarify what it is you're looking at.

The walls inside were charred from some ancient fire, blackened and lichened and weathered hard, smelling faintly of a smoke so old there may be no one still alive who could possibly remember the flame.

Or if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound Swift as a shadow, short as any dream Brief as the lightening in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth; And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!" The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.'" "Brava!

Youth's a stuff will not endure.

All that attacks is memory, all I suffer is regret.

It's a physical urge, stronger than thirst or sex. Halfway back on the left side of my head there is a spot that longs for the jolt of a bullet, that yearns for that fire, that final empty rip. I want to be let out of this cavern, to open myself up to the ease of not-living. I am tired of sorrow and struggle and worry. I am tired of my sad sister. I want to turn out the last light.

Lord, what fools these mortals be! Wonder on till truth make all things plain A foolish heart, that I leave here behind I know a bank where the wild thyme blows If we shadows have offended She'd

It was right for his speech to be a failure, since what he had been defending was a lie.

I get so scared, I can't stop it. It's like black waves, and I'm a little cork. I bob to the surface and think I'll do okay, and then another wave comes and I'm drowning again." I

The jaws of darkness do devour it up All's cheerless, dark, and deadly. The best is past Thou'lt come no more Sally