"A sense of religion is something one is born with, like a musical ear. One can develop it, cultivate it, enrich it, but if one hasn't got its seed to begin with, no powers of the intellect, no sophistication of 'evidence' can awaken it."

--

Source : Svetlana Alliluyeva (1969). “Only One Year”

Svetlana Alliluyeva

#Musical Quotes #Ears Quotes #Born Quotes

“I never face the day without perfume.”
“I was in college - Carnegie Mellon, which is one of the reasons Pittsburgh was appealing to me - and I personally feel that whole world of what we used to call "college radio" is a big part of what kept me sane through a period where I stopped dating, I felt like a freak, I felt like no girl would like me. You know, a very adolescent response to losing my hair. I turned to obsessing about The Replacements and The Smiths and R.E.M. and getting further into The Velvet Underground. People who, in my sheltered suburban life, I knew of, but didn't know fully.”
“Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. Its always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.”
“I remember looking at my dad and wanting to understand him. I didn't want to just write the guy off. He was lost. I can't speak specifically in terms of why and how he got to where he was - that was his journey. All I can tell you is, he was overwhelmed by life... My mother basically did all the work, and then they got separated and I didn't see him for a long time. He didn't try to help the family financially or spiritually, and I lived with the effects of the chaos.”
“Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.”
“Russian humor is to adapt or make some sense or nonsense out of the insanity of their lives.”
“And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.”

Source : Sebastian Barry (2008). “The Secret Scripture”, p.176, Faber & Faber
“I am in flight from my story every day, and it dogs me like a faithful stray.”

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