Lisa See Quotes

For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul, or hers.

Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best-- well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.

If our hearts and minds are not properly transformed, we are like musicians playing untuned instruments, or engineers working with broken and ill-programmed computers. The attunement of the heart is essential to the outflow of grace...We must aim at building the structures of God's kingdom but recognized that we will only create these through the transformation of our experience. Concentration on reformation without revival leads to skins without wine; concentration on revival without reformation soon loses the wine for want of skins.

The more we grow in love and virtue and holiness, the more we see love and virtue and holiness outside. All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm (which is in your power to do) and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you. It is like the hydrostatic paradox, one drop of water can balance the universe.

A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

He was still in love with you, anyway.

Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.

Léonie, you will do well to consider. You are not the first woman in my life." She smiled through her tears. "Monseigneur, I would so much rather be the last woman than the first,” she said.

All the privilege I claim for my own sex ... is that of loving longest, when existence or hope is gone.

I was all ear, And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of death.

I imagined my soul taking in these words like silicated water in the Petrified Forest, turning my wood to patterned agate. I liked it when my mother shaped me this way. I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. I never shied away from love's hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love.

The perverted ingenuity of man has given to water the power of intoxicating where wine is not procured. Western nations intoxicate themselves by moistened grain.

At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.

I couldn't hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it's hot and dead quiet again, and I love you still.

Truth is we must plant and we must water if we are to make progress with our children in holiness but only the Holy Spirit can change our children more and more into the likeness of Jesus. Our problem is we tend to depend upon our planting and watering rather than the Lord.

Willa?" "Yes" "It's morning and I still love you.

Love cannot be measured by its duration.

She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.

Love me little, love me long.