Talisman Quotes

Seventh letter : Life's simplest pleasures are life's greatest joys

Most people dont discover whats most important in life untill they are too old to do anything about it. They spend many of their best years pursuing things that matter little in the end. While society invites us to fill our with material objects, the best part of us knows that the more basic pleasures are the ones that enriches and sustain us. No matter how easy or hard our conditions, we all have wealth of simple blessings around us - waiting to be continued. As we do our happiness grows. Our gratitude expands. And each day becomes a breathtaking gift. ~ Robin S. Sharma

Memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain. ~ Gail Caldwell

Woman dwell always in the palace of unpalatable truth and never by any chance is there a magic talisman to save them from their destiny. Speech is their ultimate need. We men exist for them only in so far as we can be described. ~ William McFee

Having played to her heart's content, Chibi would come inside and rest for a while. When she began to sleep on the sofa
like a talisman curled gently in the shape of a comma and dug up from a prehistoric archaeological site
a deep sense of happiness arrived, as if the house itself had dreamed this scene. ~ Takashi Hiraide

Reaching inside his coat, Christopher pulled out the letter from Pru, the one he carried with him always. It had become a talisman, a symbol of what he had fought for. A reason for living. He looked down at the bit of folded paper, not even needing to open it. The words had been seared into his heart.
"Please come home and find me…"
In the past he had wondered if he were incapable of love. None of his love affairs had ever lasted more than a matter of months, and although they had blazed on a physical level, they had never transcended that. Ultimately no particular woman had ever seemed all that different from the rest.
Until those letters. The sentences had looped around him with a spirit so artless and adorable, he had loved it, loved her, immediately.
His thumb moved over the parchment as if it were sensitive living skin. "Mark my words, Audrey--I'm going to marry the woman who wrote this letter."
"I am marking your words," she assured him. "We'll see if you live up to them. ~ Lisa Kleypas

First letter : The power of authenticity

The most important gift we can give ourselves is the commitment to living our authentic life. To be true to ourselves, however is not an easy task. We must break free of the seductions of society and live life on our own terms, under our own values and aligned with our original dreams. We must tap our hidden selves; explore the deep seated, unseen hopes, desires, strength and weakness the make us who we are. We have to understand where we have been and know where we are going. Every decision we make, every step we take, must be informed by our commitment to living a life that is true and honest and authentic to ourselves and ourselves alone. And as we proceed, we are certain to experience fortune well beyond our highest imagination. ~ Robin S. Sharma

To Trump whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

DiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams. ~ David Halberstam

If all the Bibles in America were simultaneously dusted, the sun would be obscured for a week. It's not a magic talisman that works without being read. A Bible does us no harm as long as it remains closed. ~ Randy Alcorn

Good stories will tell you that facing the lie is the worst terror of all. And there is no talisman or magic sword that is half so potent a weapon as truth ~ Tad Williams

When you have never known a thing except to dream, it becomes more than a talisman. ~ Robert Jordan

Renunciation, The Natural Daughter demonstrates, is the act of those who believe that their happiness is dependent on a power beyond their control which happens at a particular time, and for reasons which they cannot penetrate, not to permit them fulfilment, and this is the fundamental reason for Goethe's imperviousness to philosophies of history which do not acknowledge either the inscrutability of fate or the contingency of circumstance.

The image of perfect beauty for Goethe is permanently recoverable, provided only that fate and circumstances are favourable, for they are the powers that direct the real world, in which alone fulfilment is worth having.

Renunciation is the silence that acknowledges the absence from reality of the Ideal, and it may be interrupted only by the poem that celebrates the epiphany for which even the hope may not be uttered.

Conversely, poems, being all of them occasional poems, and expressing delight in a glimpse of beauty recovered, thanks to favourable circumstances, are an emblem, or 'talisman', of a 'counter÷magic which works against the hostility of fate.

Bitter though the disappointments of life may be for a noble nature, a poem expresses the miracle of a moment in which the Ideal enters reality once more and the powers that rule the world take on, however fleetingly, the constellation they had in paradise. In the poems he has still to write, Goethe can hope to glimpse again what he has renounce ~ Nicholas Boyle

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. ~ John Quincy Adams

I was away from home, I was a virgin, I thought I had a soul. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

I used that black magical elixir as amulet against all bad things and thoughts for that day. On the other hand, it was a liquid talisman for everybody else, to save them from being strangled by me. ~ Mladen Đorđević

He finally pulled it all back into his heart, sucking in the painful tide of his misery. In the Glade, Chuck had become a symbol for him - a beacon that somehow they could make everything right again in the world. Sleep in beds. Get kissed goodnight. Have bacon and eggs for breakfast, go to a real school. Be happy.
But now Chuck was gone. And his limp body, to which Thomas still clung, seemed a cold talisman - that not only would those dreams of a hopeful future never come to pass, but that life had never been that way in the first place. That even in escape, dreary days lay ahead. A life of sorrow.
His returning memories were sketchy at best. But not much good floated in the muck.
Thomas reeled in the pain, locked it somewhere deep inside him. He did it for Teresa. For Newt and Minho. Whatever darkness awaited them, they'd be together, and that was all that mattered right then. ~ James Dashner

Memory was talisman and ward for him, gateway and hearth. It was pride and love, shelter from loss: for if something could remembered, it was not wholly lost. Not dead and gone forever. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It is precisely because we believe in democracy as a talisman, a heal-all, that we are prone to the disintegration of language that characterizes Life Under Compulsion. It ~ Anthony Esolen

King David had a ring with an inscription on it: 'All things pass.' When one is sad those words make one cheerful, and when one is cheerful it makes one sad. I have got myself a ring like that with Hebrew letters on it, and this talisman keeps me from infatuations. All things pass, life will pass, one wants nothing. Or at least one wants nothing but the sense of freedom, for when anyone is free, he wants nothing, nothing, nothing. ~ Anton Chekhov

Realizing that the dream had been sent to him for a purpose, Adin worked in secert over many months to create a likeness of the belt he had been shown.Then he traveled around the kingdom to persuade each tribe to allow its talisman to be added to it. ~ Emily Rodda

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people. ~ Walter E. Williams

Once there was a gypsy queen who wore on her wrist a chain of six lucky charms - a golden crown, a silver horse, a butterfly caught in amber, a cat's eye shell, a bolt of lightning forged from the heart of a falling star, and the flower of the rue plant, herb of grace. The queen gave each of her six children one of the charms as their lucky talisman, but ever since the chain of charms was broken, the gypsies had been dogged with misfortune. ~ Kate Forsyth

We made love. How pedestrian the words look-trite, worn, practically featureless with use-but how can one better describe that which happens when it happens? That creation? That magic blending? I might say we became figures in a mesmerized dance before the rocking talisman of the moon, starting slow, so slow ... a pair of feathers drifting through clear liquid substance of sky ... gradually accelerating, faster and faster and finally into photon existence of pure light ... as my whole straining body burst like fluid electricity into hers. ~ Ken Kesey

Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the Cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman [the cross] is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then ... a play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll. ~ Heinrich Heine

Memorizing Qur'an without studying it renders the text as a Talisman in the hands of its user; in Islam this is forbidden and is treated as a mark of Polytheism. Words convey contextual meanings to man, therefore, God's Word is only allowed to be treated as a Message; once touched by man, she/he is ordered to transport it into her/his mind and not only into her/his brain. That is why Symbols are a mediocre tool for conducting language because they paralyze the brain with their glyphs rather than excite the mind. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim

You're what gives me strength. If I am what centers you, Nikki, then you are what anchors me. Every time I touch you, every time I bury myself deep inside you - Nikki, don't you see?
You are the talisman of my life, and if I lose my grip on you, then I have lost myself. ~ J. Kenner

He thought the ancient Babylonians knew the truth of existence, knew things that were lost later on. Lost or destroyed. Not just the usual stuff about wisdom. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

In ancient days, Deltora was divided into seven tribes. The tribesfought on their borders but otherwise stayed in their own place. Each had a gem from deep within the Earth, a talisman with special powers. ~ Emily Rodda

And they were always young, Air Corps pilots and ensigns, and good-looking girls in fur coats, and always the government secretary or two, the working girl as a carry-over from the fraternity parties when she was always the girl who could be made because in some mysterious way the women of the lower classes could be depended upon to copulate like jack rabbits. And they all knew they were going to die soon with a sentimental and unstated English attitude which was completely phony. It came from books they had never read, and movies they shouldn't have seen; it was fed by the tears of their mothers, and the knowledge quite shocking, quite unbelievable, that a lot of them did die when they went overseas. Its origins were spurious; they never could connect really the romance of their impending deaths with the banal mechanical process of flying an airplane and landing and living in the barren eventless Army camps that surrounded their airfields. But nevertheless they had discovered it was a talisman, they were going to die soon, and they wore it magically until you believed in it when you were with them. And they did magical things like pouring whisky on each other's hair, or setting mattresses afire, or grabbing hats on the fly from the heads of established businessmen. Of all the parties those were perhaps the best, but he had come to them too old. ~ Norman Mailer

When we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature's gift to us of gayness, we'll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is our talisman, our fairie wand, our gift we bring to the hetero world to ... transform their pain into healings; ... transform their tears to laughter: ... transform their hand-me-downs to visions of loveliness. ~ Harry Hay

To the Nameless Saints who soothe the winds and still the restless sea...

Lenos turned his grandmother's talisman between his hands as he prayed.

I beg protection for this vessel--

A sound shuddered through the ship, followed by a swell of cursing. Lenos looked up as Lila got to her feet, steam rising from her hands.

-- and those who sail aboard it. I beg kind waters and clear skies as we make our way--

"If you break my ship, I will kill you all," shouted Jasta.

His fingers tightened around the pendant.

-- our way into danger and darkness.

"Damned Antari," muttered Alucard, storming up the steps to the landing where Lenos stood, elbows on the rail.

The captain slumped down against a crate and produced a flask. "This is why I drink."

Lenos pressed on.

I beg this as a humble servant, with faith in the vast world, in all its power.

He straightened, tucking the necklace back under his collar.

"Did I interrupt?" asked Alucard.

Lenos looked from the singe marks on the deck to Jasta bellowing from the wheel as the ship tepped suddenly sideways under the force of whatever magic the three Antari were working, and at last to the man who sat drinking on the floor.

"Not really, ~ V.E. Schwab

There are moments in the middle of winter when all seems lost, and the darkness presses in like death, and everthing is cold, and I wake in the night shivering, and relive all I went through then. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

I can bear to tell you no more - only that they comforted each other as
well as they could, and, as you probably know from your own bitter
experience, that is never quite good enough. ~ Stephen King

Not everything has to be done with herbs and oils. In fact, when it comes to any kind of business-related magic, I much prefer a consecrated metal talisman or paper seal hidden away, rather than a bulky bag that smells like a hippie is hiding in my pocket. ~ Jason G. Miller

All the fairy tales of Aladdin, or the invisible Gyges, or the talisman that opens kings' palaces, or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are only fictions to indicated the one miracle of intellectual enlargement. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you have people do some magic, impossible thing by stroking a talisman or praying to a tree, it's fantasy; if they do the same thing by pressing a button or climbing inside a machine, it's science fiction. ~ Orson Scott Card

As Lily Cavenaugh says in The Talisman (and it was Peter Straub's line, not mine), "You can never be too thin or too rich." And if you don't believe it, you were never really fat or really poor. ~ Stephen King

Altogether forty-five Emperors had claimed the Spear of Destiny as their possession between the coronation in Rome of Charlemagne and the fall of the old German Empire exactly a thousand years later. And what a pagentry it was! THe Spear had passed like the very finger of destiny through the millenium forever creating new patterns of fate which had again and again changed the entire history of Europe ... According to the legend associated with the Spear of Longinus, the claimant to this talisman of power has a choice between the service of two opposing Spirits in the fulfilment of his world historic aims
a Good and an Evil Spirit. ~ Trevor Ravenscroft

He lifted a hand and turned and went on. He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. Walking down the little street for the last time he felt everything fall away from him. Until there was nothing left of him to shed. It was all gone. No trail, no track. The spoor petered out down there on Front Street where things he'd been lay like paper shadows, a few here, they thin out. After that nothing. A few rumors. Idle word on the wind. Old news years in traveling that you could not put stock in. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Do you realize what a beacon you've become?"

"A - I beg your pardon?"

"A beacon of hope," says the woman, smiling. "As soon as we announced we'd be doing this interview, our viewers started calling in, e-mails, text messages, telling us you're an angel, a talisman of goodness . . ."

Ma makes a face. "All I did was I survived, and I did a pretty good job of raising Jack. A good enough job."

"You're very modest."

"No, what I am is irritated, actually."

The puffy-hair woman blinks twice.

"All this reverential - I'm not a saint." Ma's voice is getting loud again. "I wish people would stop treating us like we're the only ones who ever lived through something terrible. I've been finding stuff on the Internet you wouldn't believe."

"Other cases like yours?"

"Yeah, but not just - I mean, of course when I woke up in that shed, I thought nobody'd ever had it as bad as me. But the thing is, slavery's not a new invention. And solitary confinement - did you know, in America we've got more than twenty-five thousand prisoners in isolation cells? Some of them for more than twenty years." Her hand is pointing at the puffy-hair woman. "As for kids - there's places where babies lie in orphanages five to a cot with pacifiers taped into their mouths, kids getting raped by Daddy every night, kids in prisons, whatever, making carpets till they go blind - ~ Emma Donoghue

He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. ~ Cormac McCarthy

You're my wife, Suki. That gives me every right. ~ Sofia Grey

Too often, in novels that are speculative, God is a kind of kryptonite, and that's about all that it is, and it goes back to Dracula, where someone dumps a crucifix in Count Dracula's face, and he pulls away and runs back into his house. That's not religion. That's some kind of juju, like a talisman. ~ Stephen King

A cricketer who hits a century in one match may score zero in the next, if he does not have the same outfit, shoes and bat that he used in the first match. In fact, many sportsmen keep some kind of talisman in their pocket that acts as a lucky charm for their game. Here the talisman or the outfit doesn't possess any magical power that helps the player to perform better. But it is their own subconscious reliance on the charm, that makes them give their best. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Since we're into witches, let's swing by and check out this Isis at Spirit Quest." She slid her eyes right. Well, maybe she'd rag just a little. "You can probably buy a talisman or some herbs," she said solemnly. "You know, to ward off evil."
Peabody shifted in her seat. Feeling foolish wasn't nearly as bad as worrying about being cursed. "Don't think I won't."
"After we deal with Isis, we can grab a pizza sub
with plenty of garlic."
"Garlic's for vampires."
"Oh. We can have Roarke get us a couple of his antique guns. With silver bullets."
"Werewolves, Dallas." Amused at both of them now, Peabody rolled her eyes. "A lot of good you're going to do if we have to defend ourselves against witchcraft."
"What does it to witches, then?"
"I don't know," Peabody admitted. "But I'm damn sure going to find out. ~ J.D. Robb

I used to joke that she'd married me for my books and my knowledge of the field, and she used to laugh and shake her head. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

Oblivion, or an eternal sleep in which no pain could come to him again. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

Eighth letter : The purpose of life is to love

How well you live comes to how much you love. The heart is wiser than the head. Honor it. Trust it follow it. ~ Robin S. Sharma

We are not to make the Torah into God Himself, nor the Bible into a "paper pope." The Bible is only the result of the Word of God. We can experience the return of the Word of God in the here and now, the perpetual return of the actual, living, indisputable Word of God that makes possible the act of witnessing, but we should never think of the Bible as any sort of talisman or oracle constantly at our disposal that we need only open and read to be in relation to the Word of God and God Himself. ~ Jacques Ellul

I love you," he says quietly. I want to take his words, the truth of them I can see on his face, and cup them in my hands like a glowing coal from the fire. Keep them with me warm and bright, a talisman. ~ Amy Engel

Misfortune is a kind of talisman whose virtue consists in its power to confirm our original nature; in some men it increases their distrust and malignancy, just as it improves the goodness of those who have a kind heart. ~ Honore De Balzac

Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe
the open sesame to every soul. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Why do they use it like that? Peace." "When you have never known a thing except to dream," Lan replied, heeling Mandarb forward, "it becomes more than a talisman. ~ Robert Jordan

Now that I have this piglet talisman... who knows what I might find the poor judgment to do? ~ Ginn Hale

Yet I cannot believe that this talisman of love has lost all its power and I still attempt to use it.

- Those who have never had occasion to feel sometimes the value of a word, of an expression, consecrated by love will find no sense in this phrase. (C. de L.) ~ Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

You must on no account attempt to use the squares given in the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage until you have succeeded in the Operation. More, unless you mean to perform it, and are prepared to go to any length to do so, you are a fool to have the book in your possession at all. Those squares are liable to get loose and do things on their own initiative; and you won't like it. ~ Aleister Crowley

This is how I lived back then– through books. I locked myself into their stories, dreamt of their characters at night, pretended to be them. They were my armour against the hard edges of reality. I carried them with me wherever I went, like a talisman in my pocket, thinking of them as almost more real than the people around me, who spoke and lived in denial, destined, I thought, to never do anything worth recounting. ~ Tomasz Jedrowski

Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it. ~ David Mamet

And now a chill settled over them where they stood, and Harry heard the rasping breath of the dementors that patrolled the outer trees. They would not affect him now. The fact of his own survival burned inside him, a talisman against them, as though his father's stag kept guardian in his heart. ~ J.K. Rowling

She had been his talisman, his cure for the insecurities and worries that he knew deep down didn't really matter, but somehow had always managed to get the best of him. ~ Erik Tomblin

He had been ploughing his way through the early volumes, discovering the origins of Lazenby's twin obsessions: sex and eternal life. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

He could not say goodbye to these three rooms as he could to a house he had loved: hotel rooms accepted departures emotionlessly. ~ Stephen King

What makes 'American Pie' so unusual is that it isn't a relic from the counterculture but a talisman, which, like a sacred river, keeps bringing joy to listeners everywhere. When 'American Pie' suddenly is played on a jukebox or radio, it's almost impossible not to sing along. ~ Douglas Brinkley

Talisman, Talisman, show me your secrets,
Helmsman, Helmsman, turn me for home. ~ Robert James Waller

My next thought was that it might be a city of the jinn, inhabited by a race of demons, its walls the work of magic, it houses built of smoke. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

Telling me I'm pretty is nice and all, but if you really want to make my day, tell me I inspired you to read a book. Say you picked up a novel I've raved about and that you fell in love with it, too. Or tell me the time we spent reading aloud together was one of your favorite moments. Ask me to read to you, and beg for another chapter. This will fill me with indescribable joy and purpose.
And if you really want to make me speechless with wonder, tell me it was MY words and MY story you enjoyed. Tell me you shed tears over the things my characters went through, and that you're just a little bit in love with them, too. I might never recover. I will carry those words around in my heart for the rest of my life, like a talisman against all past and future criticisms.
That's how important stories are to me. ~ J.M. Richards

... bleak, wind-swept fens and moors; empty fields with broken walls and gates hanging off their hinges; a black, ruined church; an open grave; a suicide buried at a lonely crossroads; a fire of bones blazing in the twilit snow; a gallows with a man swinging from its arm; another man crucified upon a wheel; an ancient spear plunged into the mud with a strange talisman, like a little leather finger, hanging from it; a scarecrow whose black rags blew about so violently in the wind that he seemed about to leap into the grey air and fly towards you on vast black wings ... ~ Susanna Clarke

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do. The reasons are pretty obvious: If it's someone else's map, it's not your fault if it doesn't work out. If you've memorized the sales script I gave you and you don't make the sale, who's in trouble now? Not only does the map insulate us from responsibility, but it's also a social talisman. We can tell our friends and family that we've found a good map, a safe map, a map worthy of respect. ~ Seth Godin

If I must face this new trial, I would do it with my past fisted in my palm like a talisman reminding me if I could breathe it, I could write it, and when I wrote it, I would find freedom from it. Now, ~ Pepper Winters

Perhaps it is becoming clearer why I felt no romance when you told me that you carried my last letter with you, everywhere you went, for months on end, unopened. This may have served some purpose for you, but whatever it was, surely it bore little resemblance to mine. I never aimed to give you a talisman, an empty vessel to flood with whatever longing, dread, or sorrow happened to be the day's mood. I wrote it because I had something to say to you. ~ Maggie Nelson

It is odd, isn't it? Whenever I read something interesting, I tear out a piece and keep it as a talisman until I find something new to replace it with. It's a sort of superstition. I did it once and it helped me break out of writer's block, so I've done it ever since. Librarians must hate me. ~ Mohsin Hamid

I need to ask, are you afraid of spiders?"
Nicholas blinked, suddenly caught off guard, "Yes, I'm afraid of spiders."
"Were you always?"
"What are you, a psychiatrist?"
Pritam took a breath. He could feel Laine's eyes on him, appraising his line of questioning.
"Is it possible that the trauma of losing your best friend as a child and the trauma of losing your wife as an adult and the trauma of seeing Laine's husband take his life in front of you just recently..." Pritam shrugged and raised his palms, "You see where I'm going?"
Nicholas looked at Laine. She watched back. Her gray eyes missed nothing.
"Sure," agreed Nicholas, standing. "And my sister's nuts, too, and we both like imagining that little white dogs are big nasty spiders because our daddy died and we never got enough cuddles."
"Your father died?" asked Laine. "When?"
"Who cares?"
Pritam sighed. "You must see this from our point of - "
"I'd love to!" snapped Nicholas. "I'd love to see it from your point of view, because mine is not that much fun! It's insane! It's insane that I see dead people, Pritam! It's insane that this," he flicked out the sardonyx necklace,"stopped me from kidnapping a little girl!"
"That's what you believe," Pritam said carefully.
"That's what I fucking believe!" Nicholas stabbed his finger through the air at the dead bird talisman lying slack on the coffee table. ~ Stephen M. Irwin

The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar. ~ Stephen R. Donaldson

Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court that they 'believe' they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman. ~ Richard Dawkins

Second letter: Embrace your fear

What holds us back in life is the invisible architecture of fear. It keeps us in our comfort zones, which are, in truth, the least safe place in which to live. Indeed the greatest risk in life is taking no risk. But every time we do that which we fear , we take back the power that fear has stolen from us - for on the other side of fear lives our strength. Every time we step into the discomfort of growth and progress, we become more free. The more fears we walk through, the more power we reclaim. In this way, we grow both fearless and powerful, and thus are able to live the lives of our dreams. ~ Robin S. Sharma

When he remembered to turn and look for it, the Talisman was gone. ~ Stephen King

Everything became a metaphor, a talisman, a sign that I was still actually connected to people - that I wasn't so completely on my own. ~ Susan Jane Gilman

When ye set about a difficult quest - if ye're Kahnyen'kehaka, I mean - ye generally go aside for a time, to fast and pray for guidance. We havena time to be doing that now, of course. But often, while ye're doing that, ye choose a talisman - or to be right about it, it chooses you - " He sounded completely matter-of-fact about this procedure, Roger noted. "And ye carry it with ye through the quest, to keep the attention of the spirits upon your desire and ensure your success. ~ Diana Gabaldon

The one thing I've learned about family skeletons is that they always have a way of finding the light of day and ending up at the neighborhood garage sale. Alora from The Sapphire Talisman ~ Brenda Pandos

I don't want to relax. I don't want to … oh, dear Lord." He had bent his head to her throat, searching for the visible thrum of her pulse. A light, hot shock went through her. "Don't do that," she said weakly, but he was insistent, his mouth wickedly soft, and her breath hitched as she felt the brush of his tongue. Her hands shot to his muscle-banked shoulders. "Mr. Rohan, you mustn't - "
"This is how to kiss, Amelia." He cradled her head in his palms, deftly tilting it to the side. "Noses go here." Another disorienting brush of his mouth, a wash of sensual heat. "You taste like sugar and tea."
"I already know how to kiss!"
"Do you?" His thumb passed over her kiss-heated lips, urging them to part. "Then show me," he whispered. "Let me in, Amelia."
Never in her life had she thought a man would say something so outrageous to her. And if the words were improper, the gleam in his eyes was positively immolating.
"I … I'm a spinster." She offered the word as if it were a talisman. Everyone knew that rakish gentlemen were supposed to leave spinsters alone. But it appeared no one had told Cam Rohan.
A covert smile deepened the corners of his mouth. "That's not going to keep you safe from me." She tried to turn away from him, but his hands guided her face back to his. "I can't seem to leave you alone. In fact, I'm reconsidering my entire policy on spinsters. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Not piece by piece, all at once: metamorphosis is like death, as he welcomed the change he'd fought off since crossing over into the Wildeeps in that it ruptures mind from body. By grace of the blood, though, your consciousness can cohere into flesh and bone after transformation. If you're strong enough, if you don't vanish into the void. Only you can judge whether the gods' heritage is enough expressed in you to bring you back past throwing off human shape. No one can tell you that; only you will know. For a talisman, gather thoughts of what matters most to you. ~ Kai Ashante Wilson

She was tasked with guarding the doorway to the Otherworld, keeping the balance of nature (as much as anyone could in these modern times), and occasionally, helping a worthy seeker. ~ Deborah Blake

The Cross is a gibbet - rather an odd thing to make use of as a talisman against bad luck, if that is how we regard it. Or is it, instead, a cynical reminder that Virtue usually gets pilloried whenever it makes one of its occasional appearances in this world? ~ Denis Johnston

To get from the tangible to the intangible (which mature artists in any medium claim as part of their task) a paradox of some kind has frequently been helpful. For the photographer to free himself of the tyranny of the visual facts upon which he is utterly dependent, a paradox is the only possible tool. And the talisman paradox for unique photography is to work "the mirror with a memory" as if it were a mirage, and the camera is a metamorphosing machine, and the photograph as if it were a metaphor ... . Once freed of the tyranny of surfaces and textures, substance and form [the photographer] can use the same to pursue poetic truth" (Minor White, Newhall, 281). ~ Minor White

The intellect,-that is miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars shine through, with attractive beams. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This one's mine. I've claimed him. And he's wearing my talisman to keep him safe. ~ Leta Blake

Sometimes people just need thunderbolts. Thunderbolts to climb like stairs. Sometimes people just need a talisman. A promise in the lectern of their hands. ~ Matt Ferrara

Three things I remember: I was in a city so old it did not have a name,; there was a full moon that cast a pale light over buildings unlike any I had ever seen before; and at the end of a long tunnel something was waiting for me. ~ Jonathan Aycliffe

When the author is not traveling, he works at an L-shaped desk, which affords a view north through a large sunny window. He writes everything on an electric typewriter because "it has to be a book from the first day," he explains. He has no daily routine because of all the traveling he does, but follows a very disciplined writing process. He writes each page six times, then places it in a three-ring binder with a DePauw University cover ("a talisman," he calls this memento from his alma mater). When he feels that he has gotten a page just right, he takes out another 20 words. "After a year, I've come to the end. Then I'll take this first chapter, and without rereading it, I'll throw it away and write the chapter that goes at the beginning. Because the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise." He always hands in a completed manuscript, and his editor is his first reader. ~ Jennifer M. Brown

There is nothing for her beyond those gates," Gavriel said. "Do you think to bring her along like a talisman to remind you of your humanity? Or do you think sharing your damnation will lighten the burden of it? ~ Holly Black

The essay form has superceded the novel as the vehicle that best suggests the prevailing apocalyptic gestalt, and as the talisman that is most able to repel the onset of paralysing dread. ~ Adam Parfrey

Sometimes the meaning beyond the talisman is greater than the talisman itself.
A star has a hint of galaxies. ~ Talismanist Giebra

I looked out the hall window across from me as I stood leaning against the wall, and saw the bars on the outside of the windows. The rain trickled down the reinforced misted milk-glass in a constant deluge of melancholy rivulets. It was getting cold - the shadows, the rising turbulent winds, the drifting red and orange leaves were returning once more. I tuned out the sounds of the doctors voices. Soon, I couldn't make out the words they were saying as definite signals meant to convey something. Their words became a dim humming, a song drifting along the periphery of my awareness. And it was then, I knew I would be able to leave. I would go back to my room and take out the violet silk dress, the monstrous talisman I had created, and I would look at it. I might give it away after all. I need to let her go for all the ghosts she carried within her every measured stitch. ~ ~Theresa Griffin Kennedy~

Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself. ~ Anne Fadiman

The flowers need watering
the silver needs a shine.
Daughter is a magnet
drawn back to where she was last safe.
She touches the tablecloth like a talisman.
Tell me who I was. Tell me what I've become. ~ Nicole Blackman

The story enchanted me, and I took to carrying the book with me everywhere, as if it were some powerful talisman, as if it contained some magic that might somehow convey or explain something fundamental to me. ~ Richard Flanagan