Strangers and Sojourners Quotes

“[About the main character approaching death in old age, observed by her husband . . .] He saw that she had already laid down a large portion of her life long ago. Piece by piece she had given it away as she wrestled with existence, as her self was absorbed as nourishment into his life and the life of the children and the community. And laid down most piercingly, as she abandoned, one by one, the shapes of the dreams she had planned. Only to take them up again in other forms.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“The only indestructible palace is in the heart.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Real love is a long apprenticeship.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“You can't just sit there hating the wound, Tan, or indulging in bitterness. Whatever you become in life, always ask yourself, am I making more life or am I making more death?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“The world is full of hatred because it refuses to be poor. It wants to conquer fear with power. But you will conquer in another way, the unknown way. First, perhaps, you will forget. You will not see. You will not understand. Later you may see, and then you will know that the false self must die in order for the true self to be born.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“I am not afraid of being unloved. But I am terrified of never learning to love. There,”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“I have always been beguiled by birds. As if there was much they would tell me if they could, but they are only permitted to bear witness with their lives, their song.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Was there an obscure design in the madness, a determination to degrade the human being, not just to enslave or to kill, but to reach that core of dignity which is the refutation of absolute power.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“And there was longing, too, when the man returned down the aisle from the giving of flesh with a live coal of presence radiating in his smaller vessel of presence.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Why, she wondered, why did life not wish to see the survival of her firstborn son?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Be silent then, be silent, and seek the ungenerated forms to refute this unspeakable darkness.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“If human life no longer means anything, of what value is a word?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Ashley,” his father had said to him that last morning, “if you live long enough you may find that guns don’t solve very much. In life you will choose to hold a tool in your hand, or you will choose to hold a weapon.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“They were talking, these two silent people. They conversed together for hours without moving, a sign that love’s terrible force was in motion, for only love destroys time. As I watched them, I too lost consciousness of its passage.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“For your sake, not theirs. Human beings don’t just happen, Ashley. They are made, and it takes courage and suffering and damn hard work to give something life. You can be anything you set your mind to, but I’m telling you, if you lose courage, you will never be anything!”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“He is waiting for your cries to be still. He holds you. He is with you in your agony. For he too was once where you are. And where your son is.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Who could help him to love himself and discover his identity, not in the mirror, but in the eyes of another human soul hungering for him?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Oh, God, Oh, God!” groaned the distraught woman, not so much praying as acknowledging a greater mystery of struggle in which they had become unwillingly involved. It was not right that the shape of her creation be so wantonly damaged. Her permission had not been granted.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Oh, God, Oh, God!” groaned the distraught woman, not so much praying as acknowledging a greater mystery of struggle in which they had become unwillingly involved. It was not right that the shape of her creation be so wantonly damaged. Her permission”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“The young shepherd watched them meander across the slopes as they fed on the grass. How small their lives, he thought. Perfect circles in time: birth, fruition, a brief life, then death. A whole giving of self: wool, lambs, meat. A sacrificial life.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“don’t know why. But I know this; the healing begins when you abandon your demands for love and choose instead to give love, no matter what the cost. Madness, isn’t it? But a madness that works.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Their sour, belligerent faces would have new prejudices and improved ideologies, but it would still boil down to lovelessness.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Respect it? Really! You would make poetics of anything!” “It’s like the past. Out of our blind struggles comes wisdom. If we forgive.” “Forgive. Forgive what?” “Ourselves and those who have marked us.” “Stephen, I do not expect to find wisdom in the dung heap.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Truth? I don’t agree with Keats that truth is beauty and beauty is truth and that’s all you need to know. We need to know a hell of a lot more than that. But I do know that truth doesn’t do well without the help of beauty. It needs it so badly I think the world would collapse without it. Without it we couldn’t grasp things intuitively, things we could never express by intelligence.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“He did not ask why she was not enough for him, why he pursued solitude as if it were his true bride.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Water flows only through channels, observed the shepherd. So too, the river of life flows only through those valleys that have been cut by trial and suffering. He did not relish the idea, did not love suffering, as his wife had accused. But the thought did cross his mind that their present pain might be a route to higher ground if they could hold onto each other.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Your God is too much an English judge. I can’t warm my hands by his fire.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“I didn’t know I was alone”, he said to the stone. “I didn’t know I was not alone until you came unto my aloneness. And I was no longer alone.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“know myself. I’m the problem. I’m far too lonely with a loneliness that no human being could ever fill. Even a friend as wonderful as you could never fill it.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Who, then, do you believe in?” she asked, turning to him. “My God is a peasant, dragging his cross through the streets of Dunquin and Swiftcreek. He’s got splinters and dirt on his fingers. He laughs and weeps.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners