Pat Schneider Quotes

Both writing and praying are acts of deep vulnerability.

I learned without her saying a word that there are truly many ways to pray, and lighting a candle is one of them.

I go fishing in my mind. I put out bait, the bait of my own longing, my desire, and my hunger for connection, for a tug of something alive at the end of a line. Something that I may have to struggle with to pull in, but that will be wild and important to me, whether I keep it or let it go.

Be led by your joy.

Surprise is a major factor in distinguishing an answer to prayer from a projection of my own mental processes. When I can't believe I made up the answer myself, I have to look around to see where it came from.

It occurred to me that when I begin to write, I open myself and wait. And when I turn toward an inner spiritual awareness, I open myself and wait.

Darkness and light are inextricably bound together.

Whether your purpose for writing is artistic expression, communication with friends and family, the healing of the inner life, or achieving public recognition for your art - the foundation is the same: the claiming of yourself as an artist/writer and the strengthening of your writing voice through practice, study, and helpful response from other writers.

Something in me that was broken, cracked - becomes whole. The cracks, if I write them with utter honesty, are where "the light gets in." The present meets the past, and healing begins.

If I am an artist, I have a vocation. As one drawn to a lover or called to a religious mission, I go to my work - my writing - because it is essential to my happiness.

Are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground

Maybe the bottom of my own night is a darkness I cannot descend into without "the light that is within me" becoming dark.

There are cultural and societal prejudices that make it hard for us to write. It has been my experience that for some men, the struggle to write involves the prejudice that it is not "manly" to reveal the inner life, the secrets of the heart and of the imagination. For many women, the struggle to write is at base a struggle against the idea that women's lives are not of interest as literature. I have a friend whose husband once said after her first book had been published, "You sit there writing as if your life had some significance.

What a pity. How the stars
and seas and rivers
in their fragile lace of fog
go on without us
morning after morning,
year after year.
And we disappear.

Putting words onto paper - when it is done as an honest act of search or connection, rather than as an act of manipulation, performance, self-aggrandizement or self-protection - is a holy act.

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Writing is an animal that lives in the soul. It must not be whipped into doing tricks. It is not a circus animal. It can be fierce, but it is not malevolent. It can be playful, but it is not without wisdom. Above all, it is wild. A wild animal has to sleep sometimes. This is a time of deep sleep for my writing.

If we can't forget, how can we forgive? I believe that forgiving can't be done by willpower alone. I can will myself to write out my own memories and feelings. I can will myself to imagine onto the page how someone else may have felt. I can will myself to research someone else's life in order to better understand what happened. But I don't think I can forgive by simply willing to forgive. Forgiving happens to us when our hearts are ready. Sometimes it takes the form of working on our own story until quietly, often surprisingly, we simply let go of the hurt. Sometimes forgiving makes it possible to pick up the pieces of a broken relationship and begin again. Sometimes it means letting a relationship go. We can't forgive through willpower. What we can do is work toward readiness of heart. Writing as a spiritual practice can be that kind of work.
When our heart is ready, we often don't even know it until forgiveness happens within us. It is a gift.

God's love is God's attention.

To pray is to open oneself completely, intimately, into the Presence that is beyond our ability to name.

Jesus said, But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.

A writer is someone who writes!

When we neglect the artist in ourselves, there is a kind of mourning that goes on under the surface of our busy lives.