Kathleen Norris Quotations

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier

In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made

They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.

Changing husbands is only changing troubles.

We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.

The demon of acedia -- also called the noonday demon -- is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. . . . He makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and . . . he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself.

I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers…

There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change.