John Geddes quotes:

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...when I was a kid, Toronto streets were deserted and quiet on Sundays, except for the sound of church bells I stood on the sidewalk one December listening to the Christmas bells - I've never forgotten that moment...
...why is my cat a Muse? the cat has the rare grace of never saying a word too much? Mark Twain ...that's why ..."
God and your heart both whisper - incline your ear - don't just learn from your head
my heart is a desolate field over which geese vee, the sky turns and the days lie fallow
Tolstoy said, happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story - then what does that make us?
take off your sweater in the darkness and static flares as a tiny lightning storm - I am the same at the end of your fingertips
I don't just wish you rain, Beloved - I wish you the beauty of storms
I'm not in control and without a firm spot, like Archimedes I can't move the world - let alone your heart
the heart breaks in so many different ways that when it heals, it will have fault lines
my heart rides the wind and my thoughts sail away - to a land below the horizon where I know you hide from me
...you are a river rock and belong in a stream - not here in this upper room sinking in my bed...
...yes, I am your priest, your magician, your lover - I make charms to incant your presence..."
all these epic battles and monsters lately - but love is a tiny world and I prefer a more personal style
you trace a finger over my scar and uncloak me like a timid star
true love is an irrevocable act - you can only give your heart away once - after that, you give as much as you have left
some people won't even own a dog for fear it will die - you can't bubble-wrap your heart
you merely look at me and I want to confess, but don't - I've buried my heart under the floor boards, but you always dig it up
each heart is made of a different stone - no two feel alike nor break the same way
you listen first with the ears - then, you wait and listen for what your heart feels - then you consider what they've said - then, you reply
the religion of the heart is as intimate as a wish breathed to the night sky
I don't want security - to be self-assured - I want to risk my heart in making your portrait and be paid the wages of your devotion
your heart is your soul twinkling in the black firmament inside you
you can use words if you wish, but I'm warning you - I've learned how to read your heart
He heard her in his heart - whispering from the mist
if it weren't for you, mornings wouldn't be so comforting - slippers wouldn't scrape through the rooms of my heart
the making of stories is only one part of my craft -mainly, I'm a heart whisperer
...once I saw you in moonlight and I can tell you - the silvery dust of the stars doesn't shimmer like you...
...and here's a secret for you - everything beautiful is sad...gilded with impermanence..."
...you are enchanted - only a princess can leave glass footprints in the snow..."
those others - they're looking for trends - subjects to catch a spark - but I have you - a coal from God's altar - a star cupped in my hands
... only darkened trails of rain could paint your face upon a pane...
...you lifted the veil when you admitted you had no memory of that day - it was so special and your lack of recall so monstrous...
... the scarlet thread,the red clay from which we were made, runs in tiny streams through all our veins, reminding us of where we began...
...I live with regrets - the bittersweet loss of innocence - the red track of the moon upon the lake - the inability to return and do it again...
...the making of stories is only one part of my craft -mainly, I'm a heart whisperer...
...when someone is honest and vulnerable, they wring my heart - I want to hug them for being real...
...I always thought youth were idealists - now, I'm not so sure - I'm more idealistic now then at 17...
...we fear monsters because we fear the dark parts of ourselves...
...in January, everything seems desolate. The Moon ascends to cold heights - and I, a ragged sky filled with dark kisses...lie abandoned by you...
...goodness is not the absence of evil - it's the light that pushes back the darkness...
...cities are murky places - hatching grounds for monsters...
...in my dream the shadings of your soul are the dark tincture of rain...
...you can have a dark heart and be a writer, but you can't have a black one..
...Sunday evenings are heavier than clouds with rain, darker too and often interminable...
...we went to watch the waves that bitter day and the wind took your red cap and mittens - blew them into the sea...
...I hear the sounds of melting snow outside my window every night and with the first faint scent of spring, I remember life exists...
...ambition or contentment? This simple question led me back to a more balanced view of life and put me in touch with the Me I used to know...
...I didn't want you flawless - I have a bare wall at home that's flawless - I wanted your character trapped in the amber of your skin...
...if you're an actor, and you've thought your way into the part, then you're character portrayal will have authority...
...you have changed everything for me- you rearranged the furniture and now you've changed the view from my window!...
...I look out at the world through your transparent face...
...consider yourself a functional character in someone else's novel - a background character - a person on the street - that's the perspective ...
...you've lost perspective? Well, get it back - God alone has the third person point of view in this life ...
...when I think of you it's with tears, because no one else has such delicate hands that can reach into my soul and calm my fears...
...why do people venerate Einstein or Bill Gates? Clive Bell explains: Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age....
December's wintery breath is already clouding the pond, frosting the pane, obscuring summer's memory...
...freedom of conscience does not mean being uncontrolled - we have to control ourselves and at times submit to others...
...and here's a secret for you - everything beautiful is sad...gilded with impermanence...
...I worship at the temple of your body and without you, I'd have no art...
...when I chose you, I didn't want the commonplace - I didn't want a 'partner' - I wanted a shrine...
...I can think of other forms of worship than loving you, but none that make me feel so fulfilled...
...I put you on the pedestal - made you a saint - dare I blaspheme?...
...I've discovered why you fascinate - you keep the mystery and as Carlyle noted, Wonder is the basis of worship...
...all this time I've been worshiping you - when other men wanted to kiss you, I've been offering the praise of my lips...
...you think so logically...like a hawk soaring - I feel so chaotically...like a kite without a tail plummeting to earth...
you are the mysterious fire at my finger tips
I am a bed of sparks you breathe upon and kindle
...the wounds of the past and the scars of the present don't disfigure me in your eyes - because you know the price I pay for loving you ...
...it's not the stories - it's the pain and the joy and the people who stay with you long after the stories are told ...
...you mean you don't fit characters into a plot? excatly...
...here's what I've learned - people will hurt you, but you don't have to respond - not every mean comment or cruel act deserves to be noticed ...
...don't you realize a flawless profile means nothing when a mere smile drives me to desperation? Don't you covet that power?..
...don't settle for pap - our thoughts wander through eternity - experience the wonder of being alive...
...at some point we must achieve our identity -we can't be always in adolescence seeking who we are...
...you became lost in the maze of me - forgive me Love, for keeping you close...
...I prefer rain -sometimes I feel sunlight will turn me to stone - perhaps I'm a Troll...
...I remember the oily smoke of a cigarette suspended in a shaft of sunlight - with you, everything was beautiful...
...freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin - inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night...
...you are enchanted - only a princess can leave glass footprints in the snow...
..snow gently settles like dust in a shaft - for one moment there is no one else - only the wind like the hiss of an ice skate ...
...dark furrow lines grid the snow, punctuated by orange abacus beads of pumpkins - now the crows own the field...
you cross the field in the snow leaving tracks in perfect whiteness ...disturbing my placid universe...marking the landscape within me ...
...winter crescent resting in the high pine bough - you fly through the woods like a lone snow bird...
...I hardly ever see your profile, but have I told you it's beautiful? - like the soft gentle lines of snow...
Deb and I were married on a snowy night - wind cross-wove a veil of snow for her then threw confetti at us as we left the lighted church...
...I live in Ireland every day in a drizzly dream of a Dublin walk...
...some nights I'd sneak out and listen to the radio in my Dad's old Chevy - children need solitude - they don't teach that in school...
...they say a reformed roue makes the best husband, but, Oh! Didn't they tell you? Monsters can't be reformed...
... here's what I believe - sometimes God has a Plan B...
...what is sacred is the other person -we forget that sometimes - and fail to honor who they are ...
...a bard's down-to-earth love: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red and when she walks, treads on the ground...
...my heart rides the wind and my thoughts sail away - to a land below the horizon where I know you hide from me...
...I've marked our sacred place not with stones - I've put it my art to keep it safe...
...my heart is a desolate field over which geese vee, the sky turns and the days lie fallow...
...what else would a poet priest do on an endless night, but write of love?...
...writers, like priests, should have compassion...and a sensitivity to pain...
...I guess you're right - I am a priest - I offer sacrifices - so take this line, I want you to have something of mine...
...you need to travel to see the ocean - I don't need the ocean - I have the sky...
...I pluck every day from my sweater or chair, red hairs...strands of significance, traces of you in my life ...
...bow to genius, but to the authority of that genius - not the display of talent...
Your steady rain of words soaked me to the skin
...we have entertained ourselves with the pornography of violence and inflamed passions that might otherwise have slumbered...
...I lost my illusions in a black rain of bitterness - now what do you see in my eyes? How can you still love me? How can I be tender? ...
...wherever there is society, there is authority and the temptation to disobedience because our individual wills refuse to submit...
...you called me poet-priest - I am. ...devoted to my art, faithful to you...or, is the other way around?...
...you disappoint me -I am the worst liar in the world - I can't hide my pain or my need so I make a bouquet of my sorrows and give them to you ...
... paint in blue and black...sometimes gray - the colors of night - occasionally I surprise you with a mustard yellow, but then, I am a poet ...
...you either forgive a lover for abandoning you or you forgive God for taking them - either way you have to forgive...
...the best way to forgive someone is to enter into their sufferings ...
...it's easy to express romantic love - harder to manage daily love - to forgive failings close to feelings - to divide self from soul...
...words are so strong and I am so timid - my soul ignores warnings and I end up covered with your paint ...
...never be disappointing - you may wound me, but you must never be disappointing...
...it took me a lifetime of glimpses, but now I see you completely - did I tell you you're beautiful? so kind to animals, children and me...

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