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Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

Kathleen Norris

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Kathleen Norris
Love
Wisdom
Isolation
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Irony
Maybe
Pretend
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Desert
Faces
Anyway
Death
Brings
Grimness
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Dakota
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More quotes by Kathleen Norris

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When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening. . . . I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.
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Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
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If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.
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To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.
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When you come to a place where you have to left or right, go straight ahead.
Kathleen Norris
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I write what I would like to read.
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Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.
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I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.
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They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.
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For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.
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I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
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Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.
Kathleen Norris
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Traversing a slow page, to come upon a lode of the pure shining metal is to exult inwardly for greedy hours.
Kathleen Norris
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But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.
Kathleen Norris
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Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the secret.
Kathleen Norris
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You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.
Kathleen Norris
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But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.
Kathleen Norris
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When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?
Kathleen Norris
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Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it.
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Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.
Kathleen Norris