Jonathan Galassi Quotes

A lot of times, when I go back to books I loved when I was young, I don't quite understand what it was that I loved about them. Rereading 'The Secret Garden,' I felt a lot like Mary feels when she visits her garden.

One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

The biggest lie about getting older is that excitement and growth end with youth.

The great thing about a record is it frees your imagination; it gives your eyes a rest and lets your mind wander. There's the special thing that each record can mean a different thing to every person listening to it.

That's the good thing about music: you can sing about people's lives in its stages and feelings. Some songs can put something in context that you couldn't. They can free your mind or can make you think or can be redeeming.

I think I find a commonality between characters and the different sides of myself.

People say to me about my music 'it got me through college, it saved my marriage, it helped me to come out.' It's wonderful to be part of someone's life in a big way.'

I can't say what people use the experience of listening to songs for, but I would never tell somebody what it is supposed to mean. That defeats the purpose of making it. Hopefully, whoever connects with it connects with it in their own way, and it can mean whatever it is supposed to mean to them.

I prefer to read into other people's songs what I want to hear in them.

I feel like 'Amelie' is very much an extension of me. She's a contemporary woman who sees the world through her imagination.

It's very important for people to know what gives them meaning. But it's hard for people to figure out if you're not connecting with yourself and taking the time to just be introspective and daydream.

It's super dope when you connect with something personally.

Sometimes, you need to revamp yourself over the winter, participate in things that make you appreciate what you have.

When there are no lyrics, people can picture what they want. It's a reflection of where they are in their lives. Music becomes a mirror.

I've taken a look back at my body of work and tried to deduce an essence, capturing aspects that reoccur. Reflecting on your own product can be difficult yet enthralling.

Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.

Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

You relate to a character and you find that character within yourself. It's all parts of me. I don't leave characters behind. I just let them go.

When you think outside of what you know, that brings out the best in you.

But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day becasue it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness; the wonder, fear, and lonliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.

I try to stick with what moves me or teaches me about myself, same thing I hope the novels do for others.

Reading is a rendezvous with your soul.

If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.

We need time to dream, time to remember, and time to reach the infinite. Time to be.