Patrick Carman Quotes

I think of how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

When I started working with mirrors, it seemed to be the perfect material to stand in for that waiting.

Now I must wait and be still and say nothing I don't know, nothing I haven't lived over and over, and that's everything.

It takes a certain amount of courage to let the field lie fallow until you have something to say.

In the course of your education you have always been taught to look for the right answer - but you must also know that in life, sometimes the right answer is that there isn't one.

As before, there is a great silence, with no end in sight. The writer surrenders, listening.

If you sit on the doorstep long enough, I daresay you will think of something

When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response. The gray area between yes and no. Silence.

Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions. As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss the vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.

Zoey: Wait! Don't go yet. I have so many questions. Nyx: Life will reveal to you the choices you must make to answer them.

You don'’t always have to have the answer to everything.

Ask Me Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.

Time is one's best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence.

I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything.

When in doubt, stand still.

An answer is always on the stretch of road that is behind you. Only a question can point the way forward.

Wait, and thy soul shall speak.

A picture can be an answer as well as a question but if you can't answer your question try to question your question... There can be questions without answers but no answers without questions.

Do not think too deeply about these things - gradually they will become clearer to you

If you can’t decide what to do, get on the road. You won’t find the answer. It will find you.

Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions.

You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.

Love the questions themselves...Live the questions now and have confidence that someday far into the future, [I will live my] way into the answer.