36 Quotes by Etel Adnan

Love in all its forms is the most important matter that we will ever face, but also the most dangerous, the most unpredictable, the most maddening. But it is also the only salvation I know of.

Memory and time, both immaterial, are rivers with no banks and constantly merging. Both escape our will, though we depend on them. Measured but measured by whom or by what? The one is inside, the other, outside or so it seems, but is that true? Time seems also buried deep in us but where? Memory is right here, in the head, but it can exit, abandon that head, leave it behind, disappear. Memory, a sanctuary of infinite patience.

Terror is our collective failure. Life is nature’s triumph.

In the green escape of my palace, over a bridge, under a canopy of opalescent light, through there, between dark branches and their shivering leaves, I’m lost in the scent of yellow roses, arrested by the range’s filtering light.

Spring is dangerous, like love. And love survives the lovers.

The day is not made of light, but of will.

Writing is drawing, drawing is writing. Because it’s the same gesture. They’re close already.

It is a sentiment of tremendous truth and simplicity, yet tremendously difficult for the mind to metabolize – we remain material creatures, spiritually sundered by the fact of our borrowed atoms, which we will each return to the universe, to the stardust that made us, despite our best earthly efforts.

I always had a few people who liked what I did, and that was enough.