Jeanelle Cooley Quotes

“CONGRATULATIONS DL Havlin! Your entry, "There are No Lights in Naples", an unpublished short fiction - flash fiction genre category, is a finalist for the 2016 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition!”

“SUBJECT: Real originalDear Dark Assholes,I get the point. Showing me that you know how to log onto a computer and utilize Google must’ve taken some pretty keen strategizing on your part.Really, really cool trick. Now leave me the hell alone.-The DL”

“We didn't have to talk, and it wasn't awkward. We were just two lonely, out of place people sharing a holiday with junk food from the vending machine and a Claymation classic on the television." oh and later "I guess its a good thing we found each other then.”

“He smiled at me shyly and took a step closer. I froze, heart pounding, as he put one hand on my cheek and leaned toward me. I swallowed, gazing up at him with what I hoped was an expectant (and not alarmed) expression. He bent his head toward mine and...”

“For it cannot be denied that all over the world and in all ages there are beings who are perceived to be extraordinary, charming, and appealing, and whom many honor as benevolent spirits, because they make one think of a more beautiful, a freer, a more winged life than the one we lead.”

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, who ever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my own smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my father, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.”

“A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.”

“Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?”

“At Night on the High SeasAt night, when the sea cradles meAnd the pale star gleamLies down on its broad waves,Then I free myself whollyFrom all activity and all the loveAnd stand silent and breathe purely,Alone, alone cradled by the seaThat lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.Then I have to think of my friendsAnd my gaze sinks into their eyes,And I ask each one, silent and alone:"Are you still mine?Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?Do you feel from my love, my grief,Just a breath, just an echo?"And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,And smiles: NOAnd no greetings and no answers come from anywhere.”

“And was it not perhaps more childlike and human to lead a Goldmund-life, more courageous, more noble perhaps in the end to abandon oneself to the cruel stream of reality, to chaos, to commit sins and accept their bitter consequences rather than live a clean life with washed hands outside the world, laying out a lonely harmonious thought-garden, strolling sinlessly among one's sheltered flower beds. Perhaps it was harder, braver and nobler to wander through forests and along the highways with torn shoes, to suffer sun and rain, hunger and need, to play with the joys of the senses and pay for them with suffering. At any rate, Goldmund had shown him that a man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul.”