Nadia Quotes

Words created divergencies between beings, because their precise meanings put an opinion around the idea. Music only retains the highest and purest substance of the idea, since it has the privilege of expressing all, whilst excluding nothing. ~ Nadia Boulanger

The person most likely to drown in the river is the one who believes he can swim. ~ Nadia Hashimi

As far as I knew, Nadia was still with her new guy, some fancy tennis player from Brazil. Donatello or Michelangelo or something. Ninja Turtle? Yeah. ~ Ilsa Madden-Mills

We all cross a hundred peaks to get even this far. And there will be more before we each make it to whatever God has fated for us. ~ Nadia Hashimi

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult. ~ Nadia Boulanger

Every time I go look for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross, in death and resurrection. This is our God. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

The life changing seems always bracketed by the mundane. The quotidian wrapped around the profound, like plain brown paper concealing the emotional version of an improvised explosive device. Then, in a single interminable moment, when we discover the bomb, absolutely everything changes. But when we recall it from our now forever-changed lives, when we start with the plain brown wrapping, it looks like every other package, every other morning, every other walk. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Some truths need to be said out loud before they can be believed ~ Nadia Hashimi

I know how to smile, I know how to laugh, I know how to play. But I know how to do these things only after I have fulfilled my mission. ~ Nadia Comaneci

As a teenager, I began to question the Great Christian Sorting System. My gay friends in high school were kind and funny and loved me, so I suspected that my church had placed them in the wrong category ... Injustices in the world needed to be addressed and not ignored. Christians weren't good; people who fought for peace and justice were good. I had been lied to, and in my anger at being lied to about the containers, I left the church. But it turns out, I hadn't actually escaped the sorting system. I had just changed the labels. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

The eunuch sought God despite the fact that he had heard that there was no love for him there. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

You should never listen to someone practice. That is their work and theirs alone. ~ Nadia Boulanger

There is a defect in us
as human beings
because we think ourselves
a fortress, a mountain, unbreakable
but at the center
in that stillness of being
there is a chasm
of love
which echoes hope, compassion, empathy
try again, it says
and though the fault lines are full of darkness
we are held together by
the optimism and foolishness
of a single spark ~ Nadia Hasan

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us. ~ Nadia Boulanger

I write my songs many times to chord progressions on a piano. Unfortunately, I can't keep playing the piano, so I just record it into the software. ~ Nadia Ali

We have to hear again and again who God is for us and what God has done on our behalf. We must free each other from bondage through our confession and forgiveness. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

everyone thinks that other places is more fun than staying at home,
but at the end..
you will be coming home,
because..
that's where you belong to.. ~ Nadia Nazmir

Repentance in Greek means something much closer to "thinking differently afterward" than it does "changing your cheating ways." Of course repentance can look like a prostitute becoming a librarian, but it can also look like a prostitute simply saying, "OK, I'm a sex worker and I don't know how to change that, but I can come here and receive bread and wine and I can hold onto the love of God without being deemed worthy of it by anyone but God. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Each meeting occurs at the precise moment for which it was meant. Usually, when it will have the greatest impact on our lives. ~ Nadia Scrieva

Exercising with a trainer makes my quality of life go through the roof. ~ Nadia Giosia

As far as the execution is concerned ... the most frequent and most serious mistake is to follow the music instead of preceding it. ~ Nadia Boulanger

As a person, I believe that I am sensitive, which helped me be the artist I am. ~ Nadia Ali

This is our God. Not a distant judge nor a sadist, but a God who weeps. A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us. Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross. Therefore what can I do but confess that this is not a God who causes suffering. This is a God who bears suffering. I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering; God transforms it. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

There's something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics tell you a truth you can only see from the underside of the psyche. At its best, comedy is prophesy and societal dream interpretation. At its worst it's just dick jokes. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

We met the next day for coffee and when I asked her what was up she said, "I think I'm having a crisis of faith." To which I thought, what the hell does that look like for a Unitarian? "Yeah," she continued, "I-I think I believe in Jesus." Oh. That's what it looks like. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

In the two weeks following the All-Star Game, baseball was largely upstaged by the events of the XXI Olympiad in Montreal, including Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci's seven perfect 10.0 scores, Bruce Jenner's record-setting decathlon triumph, and the five gold medals won by U.S. boxers Howard Davis Jr., Sugar Ray Leonard, Leo Randolph, and brothers Leon and Michael Spinks - the mightiest performance of any American boxing team in Olympic history. ~ Dan Epstein

God is always present in love and in suffering. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

As I came closer, it took shape: long, slender, and curling, with numerous heart-shaped leaves. I felt my soul leap inside me.
For Ivy's tree was now hung with her namesake. Jade-green ivy clutched the bark with such strength that, no matter how hard you pulled, it would never let go.
I know I started crying then.
My friends came to my side at once, patting my back and telling me that everything was going to be okay. And though the tears kept coming, I knew they were right. Everything was really going to be fine now.
Because here, in front of me, was something I'd been hoping and praying for. I'd been searching for a sign, a signal to give me comfort in Ivy's passing and to tell me she was okay. And at last, here it was, growing all around me. ~ Colleen Boyd

I love the Middle East and have been lucky enough to visit a few of the countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordon and the U.A.E. ~ Nadia Ali

I like your orange dog." Nadia taps her finger near the fox I'm trying to draw.
I lean against my hand to hide my smile. "Thanks. ~ Emery Lord

Fate will make things right in the end, though only after the work has been done, the tears have been shed and the sleepless nights have been endured. ~ Nadia Hashimi

Refugees didn't just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they'd put enough time and distance between them and their misery to wake to a better day. ~ Nadia Hashimi

To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them. ~ Nadia Boulanger

I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Belief is going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm responsible for what they hear  -  and hearing the gospel, the good news about who God is, slowly forms us over time. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

It is so much easier to rest contented with what we have already acquired than to change ever so slightly those routine but profound habits of thought and feeling which govern our life, and by which we live so blissfully. This mental inertia is, perhaps, our greatest enemy. Insidiously it leads us to assume that we can renew our lives without renewing our habits. ~ Nadia Boulanger

We want to go to God for answers, but sometimes what we get is God's presence. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

I believe the most attractive thing about a guy is his personality and the way he views the world. I'm not into bad boys. I like the sweet sometimes even shy guys. ~ Nadia Ali

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment. ~ Nadia Boulanger

Am I supposed to want you this much?
Nadia. You are supposed to have me anytime, anywhere, any way you wish. ~ Eileen Wilks

What good are dreams if they lie only in closed boxes. ~ Nadia Janice Brown

Oh hey, God told me to tell you something: Get over yourself. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

I believe in 'soulmates,' especially growing up and seeing how much my parents loved each other. They always said that they had been married in past lives, too. ~ Nadia Bjorlin

I hoped to win a medal and hoped it would be gold. I knew I was good but didn't know I would be the one to score something that had never been done before. ~ Nadia Comaneci

I was pretty sure everyone was praying for different things. I wondered how Allah would sort it all out. ~ Nadia Hashimi

It's best not to depend on the gray haired. We're too close to God to rely on, ~ Nadia Hashimi

I looked harder at Matthew 25 and realized that if  Jesus said "I was hungry and you fed me," then Christ's presence is not embodied in those who feed the hungry (as important as that work is), but Christ's presence is in the hungry being fed. Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisoned but in the imprisoned being cared for. And to be clear, Christ does not come to us as the poor and hungry. Because, as anyone for whom the poor are not an abstraction but actual flesh-and-blood people knows, the poor and hungry and imprisoned are not a romantic special class of  Christlike people. And those who meet their needs are not a romantic special class of  Christlike people. We all are equally as sinful and saintly as the other. No, Christ comes to us in the needs of the poor and hungry, needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of  God might be known. ... No one gets to play Jesus. But we do get to experience Jesus in that holy place where we meet others' needs and have our own needs met. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

A vinal shine turns over shades of cerulean and jasper from her expressive lips, revealing a jewel-like surface beneath a light that remains colorfast in a kiss composed of infinite grace. Being in a state of rest, Nadia still makes me the center of attention, dovetailing in an erotic entwinement that impels me to knead her coiling flex. Her resplendent fullness macerated into my bosom now grants me a restful anodyne, enabling the allay of my inner soul. ~ Luccini Shurod

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion. ~ Nadia Boulanger

You do not require a license to love someone; you don't need to pass any complicated tests. Love does not have age limitations, rules, or restrictions. Love is our birthright - it is the one thing that all humans know how to do, the one thing we all deserve. You can't force it or fake it. You can know someone for an entire lifetime, and not feel a drop of love for them. And you can know someone for a single day, and give your heart to them completely. ~ Nadia Scrieva

Life has typhoons. They come and turn everything upside down. But you still have to standup because the next storm may be around the corner. ~ Nadia Hashimi

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here's a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn't stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on "Bright Eyes."
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) ~ Pablo

So far as musical pedagogy is concerned -
And by extension of musical creation -
Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived ~ Ned Rorem

A conversation began to take shape between us. A conversation that happened in unspoken words, in false words, in knowing glances. ~ Nadia Hashimi

Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

You know, Mimosa," Nadia says, the name beautiful in her mouth as it's never been in anyone else's, "I think we'll manage," and then she kisses her like she means it; like solid proof; like, finally, coming home. ~ Kady Morrison

I don't run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your foot ~ Nadia Comaneci

But trying to conjure my mother was like trying to hum a song I'd never heard. ~ Nadia Hashimi

There is magic in all life. ~ Nadia Scrieva

Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women, Christianity itself would not have had its unique beginning nor its glorious history, but whatever. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

We are not coaching on a daily basis because we often travel with our charity and commercial interests. ~ Nadia Comaneci

Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win. ~ Nadia Comaneci

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws.
That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don't know how. Or we believe that bad things won't happen to us.
And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler's murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia's icy wasteland - into the Soviet Army's machine guns and cannon - to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor.
Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons' lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush's shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers' coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers' sacrifice. And so she invited the press to ~ David Zindell

The fury of those nativists advocating wholesale slaughter was what struck Nadia most, and it struck her because it seemed so familiar, so much like the fury of the militants in her own city. She wondered whether she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not. ~ Mohsin Hamid

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus always seems to be pairing God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of others. But why? Growing up, I thought it was a way of guilting us into forgiving others, like Jesus was saying, Hey, I died for you and you can't even be nice to your little brother? As though God can get us to do the right thing if God can just make us feel bad about how much we owe God. But that is not the God I see in Jesus Christ. That is a manipulative mother. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

I worked hard in gymnastics since the time I was six years old until I retired at 23 years of age. ~ Nadia Comaneci

At some point, there was rape and nothing else. This becomes your normal day. You don't know who is going to open the door next to attack you, just that it will happen and that tomorrow might be worse. You stop thinking about escaping or seeing your family again. Your past life becomes a distant memory, like a dream. Your body doesn't belong to you, and there's no energy to talk or to fight or to think about the world outside. There is only rape and the numbness that comes with accepting that this is now your life. Fear was better. With fear, there is assumption that what is happening isn't normal. Sure, you feel like your heart will explode and you will throw up, you cling desperately to your family and friends and your grovel in front of the terrorists, you cry until you go blind, but at least you do something. Hopelessness is close to death. ~ Nadia Murad

Children are touched by heaven - their every breath, every laugh, every touch a sip of water to the desert wanderer. I could not have known this as a child, but I know it as a mother, a truth I learned as my own heart grew, bent, danced, and broke for each of my children ~ Nadia Hashimi

There are times when I hear my name, turn, and recognize Jesus. There are times when faith feels like a friendship with God. But there are many other times when it feels more adversarial or even vacant. Yet none of that matters in the end. How we feel about Jesus or how close we feel to God is meaningless next to how God acts upon us. How God indeed enters into our messy lives and loves us through them, whether we want God's help or not. And how, even after we've experienced some sort of resurrection, it's never perfect or impressive like an Easter bonnet, because, like Jesus, resurrected bodies are always in rough shape. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Standing in a large Minnesotan church hall I tried to muster up the interest and stamina it takes to greet each person with the honor he or she deserves. This always feels like a battle between my misanthropic personality (I don't actually care about you) and my values (you are a beloved child of God who deserves to be heard) and it's exhausting. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Tracing the pattern of the blanket with my fingertips, I decide to give myself another chance. I think I'm going to be kinder to myself; more accepting. I need to learn to live my life my way. ~ Nadia L. King

I love Chicago. It's one of my favorite cities, hands down. ~ Nadia Ali

On education - Every bit does some good. I'm lucky I know how to read. It's a candle in a dark room. What I don't know, I can find out for myself. It's easier to fool someone who can't figure things out on his own. ~ Nadia Hashimi

But being without a mother is like being stripped naked and thrown into the snow. ~ Nadia Hashimi

That was her escape, I realized. Where her body couldn't take her, her mind went. ~ Nadia Hashimi

Forgiveness is a big deal to Jesus, and like that guy in high school with a garage band, he talks about it, like, all the time. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Smiley TV preachers might tell you that following Jesus is about being good so that God will bless you with cash and prizes, but really it's much more gruesome and meaningful. It's about spiritual physics. Something has to die for something new to live. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so. ~ Nadia Boulanger

……., and in any case Nadia had taken one look at Saeed's father and felt him like a father, for he was so gentle, and evoked in her a protective caring, as if for one's own child, or for a puppy, or for a beautiful memory one knows has already commenced to fade. ~ Mohsin Hamid

The Bible had been the weapon of choice in the spiritual gladiatorial arena of my youth. I knew how, wielded with intent and precision, the Bible can cut deeply, while on the one holding it can claim with impunity that this is from God. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

If you wait to dance on the moon, you may never dance at all. ~ Nadia Hashimi

Without discipline, there can be no freedom. ~ Nadia Boulanger

You hold a coin, make a wish, toss the coin in the well as a tribute to the Guides. And then if you're meant to have it, your wish will come true." Nadia sighed. "Yes, I suppose that's how most people think it works. This is how it does work. You make a wish and toss a coin in the well as a declaration of your intention to have something in your life. Then what do you do?" Lynnea shook her head to indicate that she didn't know. Nadia's voice took on the tartness of impatience. "You roll up your sleeves and you work to make it happen." "But ~ Anne Bishop

He tried to work alongside his father as a carpenter but a man who had been taught only to destroy found it hard to create. ~ Nadia Hashimi

I carried a bravado about my drinking like I was a hero of debauchery. But on that Christmas Day, I felt like shit. I had a vague realisation that I was just trying to keep up with some version of myself that I had decided was accurate. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

How could he possibly bow deeply enough to honor a thousand-year-old samurai queen? ~ Nadia Scrieva

The human spirit, you know what they say about the human spirit? Is is harder than a rock and more delicate than a flower petal. ~ Nadia Hashimi

My family understands the pain of struggling with a loved one who's suffering from a blood-related cancer, and we seek to support those who are working to find a cure. ~ Nadia Bjorlin

North America was ready for something other than a vanilla cooking show and we were providing the double dark chocolate fudge. ~ Nadia Giosia

God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of  Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and disturbing world. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

And the Word that had most recently come from the mouth of God was, "This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased." Identity. It's always God's first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God's own. But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong: capitalism, the weight-loss industrial complex, our parents, kids at school - they all have a go at telling us who we are. But only God can do that. Everything else is temptation. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Truths can be wholly contradictory, the blackest black and the whitest white at the same time. ~ Nadia Hashimi

It's my choice today that is the memory of tomorrow. It's my choice that determines what I will become. Not the memories of the past. ~ Sharon Cameron

My parents were very loving, but disciplinarians. ~ Nadia Comaneci

There are truths and lies and there are things in between, murky waters where light gets bent and broken. ~ Nadia Hashimi

Love does not have gender. Love is not exclusive! Our hearts have the capacity to love so many people. The only tragedy is when fear, cultural barriers, ridiculous misunderstandings, or arbitrary numbers prevent us from experiencing the joy we could have. ~ Nadia Scrieva

Good Friday is a stark and unapologetic display of remorse. Remorse for the way in which humanity kills ourselves and the creation and love and God him/herself. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

My father's music has always inspired me in many ways ... especially to be better at what I do. ~ Nadia Bjorlin

Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad's lap, cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis and others for their brilliance and perfection. ~ Michelle Obama

Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality. ~ Nadia Boulanger