Saturday, May 29, 2010

Something More




"There is a stage with people we love when we are no longer separate from them, but so close in sympathy that we live through them as directly as through ourselves...We push back our hair because theirs is in their eyes."





"But we're not satisfied with what we ourselves have learned about the world and ourselves. We're always waiting for a stranger to come and tell us something more. And "something more" means "the rest of it," and that's what we need most; we miss it. So, go ahead, stranger! ...tell her what she herself is, beyond what she herself already knows she is...her life, her years, her great expenditures of self, what of herself is honey and what is gall on her tongue, the hunger she has, and the hunger she sees."



"In a few years I shall have created a woman's world for myself, which I shall love even more, for it will contain my husband and my children. But I haven't reached that stage yet. I am still wavering between the past and the the future. My husband loves me too much to allow me to work on my own writing just yet; it is difficult anyway, and I will have to work it all out for myself...With a little effort I can again become what I was before, although no longer a maiden, but a woman, and when this happens, both he and I will be satisfied."




"The literature of women's lives is a tradition of escapees, women who have lived to tell the tale...They resist captivity. They get up and go. They seek better worlds."





"She endured. And survived. Marginally, perhaps but it is not required of us that we live well."






The above quotes are from the book, Something More, Excavating Your Authentic Self by Sarah Ban Breathnach