76 Quotes by Gail Godwin

Once you get yourself out of the way, you can see everything the way it is. Your self isn’t blocking the world from you, once you have sidestepped its shadow.

There were only a few stories worth telling, which is why they needed to be told over and over again, until everyone recognized them as his own experience.

This week I’ve learned that when you really love someone, you come to accept everything about them, all the moments in their history that have made them into just what they are. And I can accept everything in your past, because it has made you you.

The human mind, as we know from personal experience, is a chronic time traveler, but we are repeatedly amazed by its ability to hitch up the body, the body that resides the only place it can— in present time— and pull it along like a wagon, with its entire load of sensory equipment, backward or forward into other time zones.

It was more like I saw him coming and knew he was the one. I went out of myself to meet him and then couldn’t get back inside without bringing him with me.

Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy’s death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. “This is my history,” he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: “Boy, was I loved.

Remorse went out of fashion around the same time that “Stop feeling guilty,” and “You’re too hard on yourself,” and “You need to love yourself more” came into fashion.

One of the notebooks was for musings and pep talks. ... The other notebooks were for writing out the novel the way authors had done for centuries.

When people are sensitive, they can tell when they meet someone who is going to influence their lives.