Christopher Morley Quotes

I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.

You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

Rather than sitting on the sidelines & hurling judgment & advice, we must dare to show up & let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.

I think to love bravely is the best and accept - as much as one can bear.

Lacey shrugged bashfully. “Do you think I’m superficial?” “Well, yeah.” I thought of myself standing outside Becca’s bedroom, hoping she’d take her shirt off. “But so am I,” I added. “So is everyone.

We do not abandon ship. I say, as corny as it may sound, through the strength and spirit and fire and dare and gamble of a few men in a few ways we can save the carcass of humanity from drowning. No light goes out until it goes out. Let's fight as men, not rats. Period. No further addition.

I honestly think vulnerability is a beautiful thing: it's tenderness, authenticity, and risk-taking. It means you're living a life where the stakes are high and you are continuing to push your own boundaries and learn new things. It keeps you flexible and young.

Vulnerability is not about winning, and it's not about losing. It's about having the courage to show up and be seen.

No man knows himself as an original.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

I learned quickly enough when to click the shutter, but what I was becoming aware of more slowly was a story-writer's truth: The thing to wait on, to reach for, is the moment in which people reveal themselves... I learned from my own pictures, one by one, and had to; for I think we are the breakers of our own hearts.

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.

I think living in a new country gives you a certain bravery that you don't have when you live in your own country - because of the freedom it gives you.

"I seek the meaning of existence," said the stranger. "You are of course assuming," said the Master, "that existence has a meaning." "Doesn't it?" "When you experience existence as it is - not as you think it is you will discover that your question has no meaning," said the Master.

One question," I said. "Did you tell me all that because you think I'm going to die?" "No," he said. "It's because you're doing something brave, and I felt I should too." "I'll take that as a yes," I said.

Ultimately, I think writing is a mixture of craft, inspiration, and being incredibly, courageously explorative with yourself - and being brutally honest, too.

suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you - who you really are - do survive.

Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man's questionings is more important than his answers.

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

One of the things forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.

And I laugh at myself for thinking I could touch the sky.

What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin-- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.