I’m trying to get back into the blogging thing. To ease back into it, here are three quotes that have completely blown me away in recent weeks.
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, on trying to jump start her writing:
“I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.”
Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land :
“When the sunlight is not screened and filtered by the moisture-laden air, the land is revealed in all its semi-arid poverty. The bald, sculpted mountains stand forth in a harsh and glaring light. But let the light turn soft with ocean mist, and miraculous changes occur. The bare mountain ranges, appallingly harsh in contour, suddenly become wrapped in an entrancing ever-changing loveliness of light and shadow; the most commonplace objects assume a matchless perfection of form; and the land itself becomes a thing of beauty. The color of the land is in the light and the light is somehow artificial and controlled. Things are not killed by the sunlight, as in a desert; they merely dry up. A desert light brings out the sharpness of points, angles, and forms. But this is not a desert light nor is it tropical for it has neutral tones. It is Southern California light and it has no counterpart in the world.”
(This has to be the definitive word, the ideal form of writing about light in Southern California.)The Sons of Korah, Psalm 85:10-13
“Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs up from the ground,
and righteousness looks down from the sky.
Yes, the Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him
and make his footsteps a way.”
(Is it me, or does anyone wonder how the Sons of Korah collaborated to write something so beautiful, so hopeful, and so true? And which brother was the editor?)
