Clarissa Quotes

Clarissa thought that was the problem with toothpaste, it always wound up looking like it had a drunken binge the night before and was spitting up all over itself. ~ Vera Jane Cook

Even if one has friends, those friends may not be suns. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When a creature is exposed to violence, it will tend to adapt to that disturbance, so that when the violence ceases or the creature is allowed its freedom, the healthy instinct to flee is hugely diminished, and the creature stays put instead. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

What you said before," she asked. "That Jace Herondale loves Clarissa Fairchild more than anyone you've ever known except someone - you never finished the sentence. Who was it?"
"I was going to say you and me and Will," he said. "But - that's rather a strange thing to say, isn't it?"
"Not strange at all." She cuddled in close against his side. "Exactly right. Ever and always, exactly right. ~ Cassandra Clare

Go out in the woods, go out. If you don't go out in the woods nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The wild nature has a vast integrity to it. It means to establish one's territory, to find one's pack, to be in one's body with certainty and pride regardless of the body's gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one's own behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one's cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity, can cause to be set in motion ... Mend the part of the world that is within your reach. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the family of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. There is a saying cultura cura, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the predator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

And the Clave wants to meet Clarissa. You know that, Jace."
"The Clave can screw itself."
"Jace," Maryse said, sounding genuinely parental for a change. "Language."
"The Clave wants a lot of things," Jace amended. "It shouldn't necessarily get them all. ~ Cassandra Clare

What about you, little girl? You going to be a Shadowhunter like your dad?"
Clary tried to hide her annoyance. "No," she said. "I'm going to be a Shadowhunter, but I'm not going to be like my father. And my name's Clarissa, but you can call me Clary."
The elevator came to a stop; the doors slid open. The warlock woman's blue eyes rested on Clary for a moment. "Oh, I know your name," she said. "Clarissa Morgenstern. Little girl who stopped a big war. ~ Cassandra Clare

She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multilingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman's soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her. She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory. She has been lost and half-forgotten for a long, long time. She is the source, the light, the night, the dark, and daybreak. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius. ~ Michael Cunningham

Come along,' she said. 'They're waiting.'
He had never felt so happy in the whole of his life! Without a word they made it up. They walked down to the lake. He had twenty minutes of perfect happiness. Her voice, her laugh, her dress (something floating, white, crimson), her spirit, her adventurousness; she made them all disembark and explore the island; she startled a hen; she laughed; she sang. And all the time, he knew perfectly well, Dalloway was falling in love with her; she was falling in love with Dalloway; but it didn't seem to matter. Nothing mattered. They sat on the ground and talked-he and Clarissa. They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort. And then in a second it was over. He said to himself as they were getting into the boat, 'She will marry that man,' dully, without any resentment; but it was an obvious thing. Dalloway would marry Clarissa. ~ Virginia Woolf

The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

El duende is literally the goblin wind or force behind a person's actions and creative life, including the way they walk, the sound of their voice, even the way they lift their little finger. It is a term used in flamenco dance, and is also used to describe the ability to "think" in poetic images. Among Latina curanderas who recollect story, it is understood as the ability to be filled with spirit that is more than one's own spirit. Whether one is the artist or whether one is the watcher, listener, or reader, when el duende is present, one sees it, hears it, reads it, feels it underneath the dance, the music, the words, the art; one knows it is there. When el duende is not present, one knows that too. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The body is like the earth ... as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into parcels, cut off, overmined, and shorn of its power as any landscape. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I'll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is the door; if you have an old, old story, that is the door. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Story is a medicine which strengthens and arights the individual and the community. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I was an aesthete rather than an athlete, and my only wish was to be an ecstatic wanderer. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

For a wild child born into a rigid community, the usual outcome is to experience the ignominy of being shunned. Shunning treats the victim as if she does not exist. It withdraws spiritual concern, love, and other psychic necessities from that person. The idea is to force her to conform, or else kill her spirituality and/or to drive her from the village to languish and die in the outback ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Aren't you, uh ... " Clary searched for the right word. "Reproducing? ~ Cassandra Clare

Holy Mother is not meant to be a fence: Holy Mother is a Gate. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Three things differentiate living from the soul verses living from the ego only: the ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road, and the patience to learn deep love over time. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We need to be aware of all different forms of brainwashing and radicalization. ~ Clarissa Ward

We're journalists, and so it's our job to be impartial and provide a fair and thorough assessment of what's happening on the ground from the perspective of what we're able to see. ~ Clarissa Ward

Yeah," Alex said in his drawling voice. "I mean, Naomi only got beat half to death. She can cut this Clarissa slack, it's no big deal. But the captain's girlfriend got hurt. He's the real victim here. ~ James S.A. Corey

All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience, or foolishness. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

While I do not in any way mean to say that a woman should throw herself into a torturous or abusive situation, I do mean she must set for herself something in life that she is willing to reach for and therefore take risks for. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of nonconviction ... It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirits, the pit at the center, and rising hope. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision - possibly the most important psychic decision of her future life - and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they've "had it" and "the last straw has broken the camel's back" and they're "pissed off and pooped out." Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Like a trail through a forest which becomes more and more faint and finally seems to diminish to a nothing, traditional psychologiical theory too soon runs out for the creative, the gifted, the deep woman. Traditional psychology is often spare or entirely silent about the deeper issues important to woman: the archetypal, the intuitive, the sexual and cyclical, the ages of women, a woman's way, a woman's knowing, her creative fire... ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

People say you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Truth is, you knew what you had, you just never thought you'd lose it." - Anonymous ~ Clarissa Wild

Clarissa remembered why she didn't like him, he was astucious, an ambiguous villain in a gentleman's three piece suit. ~ Vera Jane Cook

To take the world into one's arms and act towards it in a soul-filled and soul-strengthening manner is a powerful act of wildish spirit. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

But isn't that what love is, Clarissa? Ownership? 'I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine,' as the Song of Songs goes."
"No. And don't quote the Bible at me. I don't think you get it ... It's not just that someone belongs to you, it's that you give yourself to them. I doubt you've ever given anything to anyone. Except maybe nightmares."
"To give yourself to someone?" The thin smile didn't waver. "As you've given yourself to Jonathan?"
"What?"
"You think I haven't seen the way you two look at each other? The way he says your name? You may not think I can feel, but that doesn't mean I can't see feelings in others. ~ Cassandra Clare

What we would think of as a beef animal had the double purpose of being a working or draught animal that could pull heavy loads. There is an old adage, "A year to grow, two years to plough and a year to fatten." The beef medieval people would have eaten would have been a maturer, denser meat than we are used to today. I have always longed to try it. The muscle acquired from a working ox would have broken down over the fattening year and provided wonderful fat covering and marbling. Given the amount of brewing that took place, the odds are that the animals would have been fed a little drained mash from time to time. Kobe beef, that excessively expensive Japanese beef, was originally obtained from ex-plough animals whose muscles were broken down by mash from sake production and by massage. I'd like to think our beef might have had a not dissimilar flavour. ~ Clarissa Dickson Wright

Among wolves, when the bitch leavers her pups to go hunting, the young ones try to follow her out of the den and down the path. She snarls at them, lunges at them, and scares the bejeezus out of them till they run slipping and sliding back to the den. Their mother knows that they do not yet know how to weight and assess other creatures. They do not know who is a predator and who is not. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A woman's life may die away in the fore of self-hatred for complexes can bite hard and, at least for a time, successfully frighten her away from coming too near the work or life that matters to her ... Many years are spent not going, not moving, not learning, not finding out, not obtaining, not taking on, not becoming. The vision a woman has for her own life can also be decimated at someone else's jealousy or someone's plain out destructiveness towards her family, mentors, teachers, and friends are not supposed to be destructive if and when they feel envy, but some decidedly are, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. No woman can afford to let her creative life hang by a thread while she serves an antagonistic love relationship , parent, teacher or friend. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We say it is the nature of the thing.Yet we find this destructive process exacerbated when the culture surrounding a women touts , nourishes, and protects destructive attitudes towards the deep instinctual and soulful nature. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Like my kith and kin before me, I swagger-staggered in high heels, and I wore a dress and a hat to church. But my fabulous tail often fell below my hemline, and my ears twitched until my hat pitched, at the very least, down over both my eyes, and sometimes clear across the room. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I do not think I wish you smashing my pie with your truncheon." Adrian stilled and blinked. There was that truncheon word again and he had no idea what she was talking about. Smashing her pie with his truncheon? That did not even make sense. "I fear I have no idea what you are talking about, wife." Clarissa gave a little jerk at the last word, then said, "I mean, I do not want you breaking my veil with your key." Rather than helping him understand, her words simply confused him further. "What?" "My lock is too small for your truncheon." "Are you speaking in tongues?" Adrian asked. "Clarissa, I have no idea what - ~ Lynsay Sands

It's not the failure that holds us back but the reluctance to begin over again that causes us to stagnate. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Fortunately, no matter how many times she is pushed down, she bounds up again. No matter how many times she is forbidden, quelled, cut back, diluted, tortured, touted as unsafe, dangerous, mad, and other derogations, she emanates upward in women, so that even the most quiet, even the most restrained woman keeps a secret place for Wild Woman, Even the more repressed woman has a secret life, with secret thoughts and secret feelings which are lush and wild, that is, natural. Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Sometimes there are no words to help one's courage. Sometimes you just have to jump. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The psyches and souls of women also have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning - fresh as if issued to children on a beach. ~ Virginia Woolf

Unfurl the bandages, ready the medicine. Let us return now, wild women howling, laughing, singing up The One who loves us. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We practice conscious forgetting by refusing to summon up the fiery material, we refuse to recollect. To forget is an active, not a passive endeavor. It means to not haul up certain materials, or turn them over and over, to not work oneself up by repetitive thought, picture, or emotion. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Even in the best of worlds the soul needs refurbishing from time to time. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought. ~ Virginia Woolf

You have ruthlessness in your bones and ice in your heart, Clarissa. Don't tell me any differently. ~ Cassandra Clare

Jace," she said. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"Because you're lying to me. And you're lying to yourself." Jace's eyes were blazing, and even though his hands were stuffed into his pockets, she could see that they were knotted into fists. ~ Cassandra Clare

In the 20th century, the French managed to get a death on the myth that they produce the world's best food. The hype has been carefully orchestrated, and despite the fact that the most popular food in the last quarter has undoubtedly been Italian, the French have managed to maintain that mental grip. ~ Clarissa Dickson Wright

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Women find that as they vanquish the predator, taking from it what is useful and leaving the rest, they are filled with intensity, vitality, and drive.
The predator's rage can be rendered into a soul-fire for accomplishing a great task in the world. The predator's craftiness can be used to inspect and understand things from a distance. The predator's killing nature can be used to kill off that must properly die in a woman's life,or what she must die to in her outer life, these being different things at different times. Usually, she knows exactly what they are. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Wolves and women have much in common. Both share a wild spirit. Women and wolves are instinctual creatures, able to sense the unseen. They are loyal, protective of their packs and their pups. They are wild and beautiful. Both have been hunted and captured. Even in captivity, one can see in the eyes of a woman, or a wolf, the longing to run free, and the determination that should the opportunity arise, whoosh, they will be gone. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The only trust required is to know that when there is one ending there will be another beginning. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

But why should I ask all the dull women in London to my parties? said Clarissa. And if Mrs. Marsham gave a party, did she invite her guests? ~ Virginia Woolf

The naive woman tacitly agrees to remain "not knowing." Women who are gullible or those with injured instincts still, like flowers, turn in the direction of whatever sun is offered. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

So, the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The deterioration of symbols is natural. They wear out, needing to be reclaimed, recreated; returned to the spirit. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The word pneuma (breath) shares its origins with the word psyche; they are both considered words for soul. So when there is song in a tale or mythos, we know that the gods are being called upon to breathe their wisdom and power into the matter at hand. We know then that the forces are at work in the spirit world, busy crafting soul. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Even a trashy movie can make you cry. There were deep emotional reactions that ducked the censure of the higher reasoning processes and forced us to enact, however vestigially, our roles - me, the indignant secret lover revealed; Clarissa the woman cruelly betrayed. ~ Ian McEwan

What?" Clarissa glanced blankly at the dark blur beside her.
"Keep your eyes closed, and you will not lose your balance," the man suggested, and she saw his hand move closer to her. He was offering it so that she would rise.
Clarissa opened her mouth to refuse, then paused as his hand suddenly enclosed hers, sending a shock of sensation racing up her arm. It was such an odd feeling - excitement, wild excitement - coursing across her flesh.
"I do not…." she began faintly with bewilderment, pausing when his hand lifted her chin and the man bent to stare into her eyes. Close enough to kiss, she thought vaguely. Good God, Clarissa realized, close enough to see! For one brief second she stared into the most beautiful set of clear brown eyes she'd ever seen; then he pulled back slightly, out of focus.
"Trust me."
It was not so much a request as an order. But Clarissa remembered those eyes, so dark, so kind - and she nodded.
Then he was tugging her out of her seat, directing her through the crowd of dancers to the middle of the floor.
"Now…" His voice was calm and soothing as he turned her to face him. "Close your eyes," he instructed, lifting her free hand to his shoulder. "Relax." His voice was almost hypnotic, Clarissa thought vaguely.
"Follow me. I will not allow you to stumble."

-Clarissa & Adrian ~ Lynsay Sands

When a woman is frozen of feeling, when she can no longer feel herself, when her blood, her passion, no longer reach the extremities of her psyche, when she is desperate; then a fantasy life is far more pleasurable than anything else she can set her sights upon. Her little match lights, because they have no wood to burn, instead burn up the psyche as though it were a big dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you begin to believe it. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

As long as a woman is forced into believing she is powerless and/or is trained to not consciously register what she knows to be true, the feminine impulses and gifts of her psyche continue to be killed off. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories ... water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

While exile is not a thing to desire for the fun of it, there is an unexpected gain from it;the gifts of exile are many. It takes out weakness by the pounding. It removes whininess, enables acute insight , heightens intuition, grants the power of keen observation and perspective that the 'insider' can never achieve. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The soul has no gender. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Like night dreams, stores often use symbolic language, therefore bypassing the ego and persona, and traveling straight to the spirit and soul who listen for the ancient and universal instructions embedded there. Because of this process, stories can teach, correct errors, lighten the heart and the darkness, provide psychic shelter, assist transformation and heal wounds. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When the wildish woman has an idea, the friend or lover will never say, "Well, I don't know ... sounds really dumb [grandiose, undoable, expensive, etc.] to me." A right friend will never say that. They might say instead ... "I don't know if I understand. Tell me how you see it. Tell me how it will work. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman ... have faith. There is yet time. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I had been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had an accent and was dark. I wasn't supposed to like him. Clarissa called his large eyes, with their half closed lids, "freak-a-delic," but he was nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he hadn't. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in our photos for the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that under his picture he had answered the standard "My heart belongs to" with "Susie Salmon." I guess he had had plans. I remember his lips were chapped. ~ Alice Sebold

Suppose ... the body is a God in its own right, a teacher, a mentor, a certified guide? Then what? ... Are we strong enough to refute the party line and listen deep, listen true to the body as a powerful and holy being? ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Good-morning to you, Clarissa! ~ Virginia Woolf

All strong souls first go to hell before they do the healing of the world they came here for. If we are lucky, we return to help those still trapped below. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

She is often the broken-winged one, who does everything all wrong until people realize she's been doing it ... pretty right all along. She's the poor girl who never dressed right, who had torn hose, and they were all baggy around her ankles. She's the Raggedy Ann of the sophisticated world, who pulls it out at the last minute, flies by the seat of her pants, cackling all the way home. She is the late bloomer, the late start, the autumn bush, the winter holly. She is Baubo, all the classical Greek goddesses. She is the old girl who still blushes, and laughs, and dances. She's the truth teller, maybe that people hate to hear, but they learn to listen to. She is not dumb and in some ways is not shrewd. She works on passion, and the doll in her pocket, and the intuition that leads her into and through all the world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Many of us have lived desert lives: very small on the surface, and enormous under the ground. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I once dreamt I was telling stories and felt someone patting my foot in encouragement. I looked down and saw that I was standing on the shoulders of an older woman who was steadying my ankles and smiling up at me.
I said to her, "no no come stand on my shoulders, For you are old and I am Young."
"No no" she insisted, "this is the way it is supposed to be." I saw that she stood on the shoulders of a woman far older than she, who stood on the shoulders of a woman even older, who stood on the shoulders of a woman in robes, who stood on the shoulders of another soul, who stood on the shoulders... ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Clarissa noticed his eyes, they were like indifferent tides, shielding knowledge of an impending storm ~ Vera Jane Cook

Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you've endured. They're a treasure map to the deep self. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Creativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, it's fed. That is why beholding someone else's creative word, images, idea, fills us up, and inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Why can't I go to Idris with you, then? Because it's not safe for you there O and it's safe for me here? I've been nearly killed almost a dozen times in the past month. That's because Valentine has been concentrating on the two Mortal Instruments that were here. He's going to shift his focus to Idris now. We all know it
We're hardly as certain of anything as all that. And the Clave wants to meet Clarissa. You know that, Jace. The Clave can screw itself. ~ Cassandra Clare

Incidentally, although the Cistercians did much to improve the quality of sheep, the animal remained much smaller than its modern descendants; as late as the early eighteenth century a sheep wasn't much bulkier than a Labrador Dog. ~ Clarissa Dickson Wright

This wolf-woman Self must have freedom to move, to speak, to be angry, and to create. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Mondays are just like Sam from Clarissa Explains it All. They just show up through the damn window whenever the hell they feel like it. ~ Shannon Woodward

It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of
his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one "Go!", his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his
fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat
and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species. ~ Irving Stone

She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a doorway with lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one remembered. Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever; there she was however; there she was. ~ Virginia Woolf

Rather than chairs and tables, I preferred the ground, trees, and caves, for in those places I felt I could lean against the cheek of God. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

How often since then has she wondered what might have happened if she'd tried to remain with him; if she'd returned Richard's kiss on the corner of Bleeker and McDougal, gone off somewhere (where?) with him, never bought the packet of incense or the alpaca coat with rose-shaped buttons. Couldn't they have discovered something larger and stranger than what they've got. It is impossible not to imagine that other future, that rejected future, as taking place in Italy or France, among big sunny rooms and gardens; as being full of infidelities and great battles; as a vast and enduring romance laid over friendship so searing and profound it would accompany them to the grave and possibly even beyond. She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

Or then again maybe not, Clarissa tells herself. That's who I was. This is who I am--a decent woman with a good apartment, with a stable and affectionate marriage, giving a party. Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.

Still, there is this sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it's as simple as that. Richard was the person Clarissa loved at her most optimistic moment. Richard had stood beside her at the pond's edge at dusk, wearing cut-off ~ Michael Cunningham

My brother's always hungry late at night, if he comes home that is. He always eats cheesy chips while he's half asleep on the couch. I look around, but he's not here, and I don't find any crumbs tucked into the couch bedding. The usual stain from his boots is missing from the carpet, and I ~ Clarissa Wild

She must be willing to feel anxious sometimes, otherwise she might as well have stayed in the nest. Sometimes ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

If a woman holds on to this gift of being old while she is young and young while she is old, she will always know what comes next If she has lost it, she can yet reclaim it with some purposeful psychic work. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes