Rachel Ropeik

it wasn’t like being clean made a person any more or less worthy of love.

Solitude can happen to anyone: we are all at risk.

Cilek proposed a series of what he called ‘pilgrim rules’. Of these, the two most memorable were the ‘Rule of Resonance’: ‘A smaller place with which we resonate is more important than a place of great pilgrimage’; and the ‘Rule of Correspondence’: ‘A place within a landscape corresponds to a place within the heart.’

It’s important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it’s hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we’ve learnt even if what we do changes us and we risk not recognizing each other when we return.’

When we criticize ourselves, we’re reinforcing the idea that it’s possible to avoid failure as long as we do everything right.

the homesickness is for an experience that could in any case never be repeated, and for people and ways of thought whose rightful place is the past. This desert belongs to another ‘now’ and it’s foolish to compare them.

It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar;

It is easy to forget, but stories need not always have a purpose. We are quick to say that folktales have a moral or a lesson or a creed. But most of the stories that have survived the ages are told for one purpose only, and that purpose is to say this: “Being human is difficult. Here is some evidence.”