The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: David Vann

This is what I’ve always loved about a city, all the worlds hidden away inside, largest of aquariums.

There can be no god without desire.

We live through evolution ourselves, each of us, progressing through different apprehensions of the world, at each age forgetting the last age, every previous mind erased. We no longer see the same world at all.

There are no gods, only men.

And only men could have invented the idea of a king.

Even now, I still believe metamorphosis is the greatest beauty.

beauty, metamorphosis

I’ve thought of it ever since, the idea that we don’t stray far, that what feels like discovery is only the revealing of what was hidden but there, waiting. I remember because I think this might be a path to forgiveness, to realize that no matter how violent, how frightening my mother was, it was not random but at least partly inescapable, that who she was had been set in motion long before and she had to suffer that person as much as I did.

discovery-of-oneself, forgiveness

Maybe this is as near as we can come to forgiveness. Not the past wiped away, nothing undone, but some willingness in the present, some recognition and embrace and slowing down.

A change in those moments, some switch turned off forever, the end of trust or safety or love, and how do we ever find the switch again?

abuse, growing-up, love, nurture, parents-and-children, safety, trust, trustworthy

What would the world be like if men never ruled again?

men, ruled, world

As if each of us might somehow have a blueprint. As if somewhere there’s the shape of my life, and I had the chance to choose a few variations, but not far from the pattern.

family, family-history, free-will, patterns, psychology

History…to stand in a place and know that this where you come from for a dozen generations or maybe a hundred generations or maybe more. To know there was a great city two thousand years ago in this place, and that your ancestors helped build it and lived there and worked there. When you walk down a small road, all the others who are walking there with you from before.