47 Quotes by David James Duncan

The principles that will save Earth’s life are the same principles that save the living souls of humans: ineluctable spiritual principles.

Punctuationally speaking, wonder is a period at the end of a statement we’ve long taken for granted, suddenly looking up and seeing the sinuous curve of a tall black hat on its head, and realizing it was a question mark all along.

Music is just a word for something we love largely because it consists of things that words can’t express. Likewise, the heart is just a word for something in us that music sometimes touches.

The bad thing about falling into pieces is that it hurts. The good thing about it is that once you’re lying there in shards you’ve got nothing left to protect, and so have no reason not to be honest.

And into the brown paper bag of my heart, Eddy slipped a smile.

I’d taken a big fat crisis off my shoulders and loaded it all on Jesus, which seemed unfair in a way, but was exactly what the Bible recommended.

I loved the solar smile he would turn on his friends at times – and on me – nonplussing us when he simply left it on us, full-beam, for such a long, long moment that we’d finally have no choice but to realize this was no social smile, no rote kind of friendliness: this was what it felt like to be completely seen and loved for a moment.

My books are inert as cordwood till a readers imagination ignites one and an old flame jumps to life.

But I finally concluded that it is an inalienable right of lovers everywhere to become temporarily worthless to the world, it may even be their duty.