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The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere QUOTES

The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere QUOTES

1 " ... a man sitting still is alone, often, with the memory of all he doesn't have. And what he does have can look very much like nothing. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

2 " One of the strange laws of the contemplative life,” Thomas Merton, one of its sovereign explorers, pointed out, “is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.” Or, as Annie Dillard, who sat still for a long time at Tinker Creek—and in many other places—has it, “I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

3 " As Henry David Thoreau, one of the great explorers of his time, reminded himself in his journal, “It matters not where or how far you travel—the farther commonly the worse—but how much alive you are.” Two "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

4 " In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

5 " it’s not our experiences that form us but the ways in which we respond to them; "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

6 " Sitting still as a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it; "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

7 " one is reminded, at a level deeper than all words, how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

8 " More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk. • "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

9 " Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply. • "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

10 " Writers, of course, are obliged by our professions to spend much of our time going nowhere. Our creations come not when we’re out in the world, gathering impressions, but when we’re sitting still, turning those impressions into sentences. Our job, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art. Sitting still is our workplace, sometimes our battlefield. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

11 " If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with. —Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

12 " not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

13 " One could start just by taking a few minutes out of every day to sit quietly and do nothing, letting what moves one rise to the surface. One could take a few days out of every season to go on retreat or enjoy a long walk in the wilderness, recalling what lies deeper than the moment or the self. One could even, as Cohen was doing, try to find a life in which stage sets and performances disappear and one is reminded, at a level deeper than all words, how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions. The "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

14 " Anyone reading this book will take in as much information today as Shakespeare took in over a lifetime. Researchers in the new field of interruption science have found that it takes an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from a phone call. Yet such interruptions come every eleven minutes—which means we’re never caught up with our lives. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

15 " greatest surprises I have encountered has been that the people who seem wisest about the necessity of placing limits on the newest technologies are, often, precisely the ones who helped develop those technologies, which have bulldozed over so many of the limits of old. The very people, in short, who have worked to speed up the world are the same ones most sensitive to the virtue of slowing down. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

16 " Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

17 " Soon after we first got to know each other, I asked him a typical traveler’s question: How did he deal with jet lag? He looked at me, surprised. “For me a flight is just a brief retreat in the sky,” Matthieu said, as if amazed that the idea didn’t strike everyone. “There’s nothing I can do, so it’s really quite liberating. There’s nowhere else I can be. So I just sit and watch the clouds and the blue sky. Everything is still and everything is moving. It’s beautiful.” Clouds and blue sky, of course, are how Buddhists explain the nature of our mind: there may be clouds passing across it, but that doesn’t mean a blue sky isn’t always there behind the obscurations. All you need is the patience to sit still until the blue shows up again. His "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

18 " many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

19 " As I came down from the mountain, I recalled how, not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. Stillness is not just an indulgence for those with enough resources—it’s a necessity for anyone who wishes to gather less visible resources. Going nowhere, as Cohen had shown me, is not about austerity so much as about coming closer to one’s senses. I "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

20 " One of the strange laws of the contemplative life," Thomas Merton, one of its sovereign explorers, pointed out, "is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you. "

― Pico Iyer , The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere