"While drawing grasses I learn nothing 'about' grass, but wake up to the wonder that there is grass at all."

“Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.”

Source : Anthony Doerr (2008). “Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

“Sicknesses, losses, crosses, anxieties and disappointments seem absolutely needful to keep us humble, watchful and spiritual-minde d. They are as needful as the pruning knife to the vine and the refiner’s furnace to the gold.”

“There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.”

“Like a tree that grows stronger with more branches and roots, you need to find more and more ways to be inspired,”

“The face is the soul of the body.”

“There was a time when all dark-skinned people were called Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa as, 'The Land Of The Burnt-Face People.'”

“About life: "It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.”

Source : James Frey (2004). “A Million Little Pieces”, p.507, Anchor

“There are enough forces in the world that are afraid of our strength, "our hugeness," as one of our sovereigns said. So, they seek to divide us into parts, this is a well-known fact. Look at what they did with Yugoslavia: they cut it into small pieces and are now manipulating everything that can be manipulated there, which is almost anything. Apparently, someone would like to do the same with us.”