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We sabotage our creative possibilities because the world revealed by our imagination may not fit well with the life we have taken so much trouble to construct over the years. Faced with the pain of that distance, the distance between desire and reality, we turn just for a moment and quickly busy ourselves.

David Whyte

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David Whyte
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: September 21
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Poet
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Marrickville
New South Wales
Australia
World
Moments
Trouble
Faced
Reality
Imagination
Possibilities
May
Creative
Quickly
Wells
Taken
Fit
Well
Turns
Busy
Sabotage
Much
Moment
Distance
Construct
Years
Pain
Possibility
Constructs
Life
Desire
Turn
Revealed

More quotes by David Whyte

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We shape our self to fit this world and by the world are shaped again
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Art is the act of triggering deep memories, of what it means to be fully human.
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But what would that be like feeling the tide rise out of the numbness inside
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Poetry for me has been a long pilgrimage, a journey and a growing relationship with the unknown.
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The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.
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I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.
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A good poem has its own life. It's like bringing a child into the world. You, the poet, birthed the child, but the child will surprise you continually. I think a work of art has its own aliveness, its own future.
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I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love.
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For the personality, bankruptcy or failure may be a disaster. For the soul, it may be grist for its strangely joyful mill, and a condition it has been secretly engineering for years.
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The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.
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Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.
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We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.
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I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat. I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.
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Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way.
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When I recite poems onstage, I put myself into the very personal struggle and it grants tremendous perspective. At the same time you get another perspective on the poem you're reciting.
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The tragedy with velocity as the answer to complexity is that, after awhile, you cannot see or comprehend anything that is not traveling at the same speed you are. And you actually start to feel disturbed by people who have a sense of restfulness to their existence.
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Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through it s black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else.
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I returned to poetry as a more precise way to describe the world, more precise than science.
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To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
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What we strive for in perfection is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire what disturbs and then nourishes has everything we need.
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