quote.basket.7.29.2026
life, death, dark night of the soul, and waterlogged timber
Quote baskets are just quotes that have come up in my life (or substack) recently. If I included them in a longer form post you’ll see it linked below under the quote(s). My Quote Basket Tag has older basket posts.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~ Mary Oliver
The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.
~ Joseph Campbell
Bear in mind that everything that exists is already fraying at the edges, and in transition, subject to fragmentation and to rot. Or that everything was born to die.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
The casual phrase dropped by a friend in conversation, the paragraph in a book, the incident observed by the roadside, has some special quality, and is accorded a special welcome. But, having been welcomed, it is forgotten, or at least ignored. It sinks into the horrid depths of my subconscious like a waterlogged timber into the slime at the bottom of a harbor, where it lies alongside others which have preceded it. Then, periodically -- but by no means systematically -- it is hauled up for examination along with its fellows, and , sooner or later, some timber is found with barnacles growing on it. Some morning when I am shaving, some evening when I am wondering whether my dinner calls for white wine or red, the original idea reappears in my mind, and it has grown. Nearly always it has something to with what eventually will be the mid-point of a novel or a short story, and sometimes the growth is towards the end and sometimes towards the beginning. The casualty rate is high -- some timbers grow no barnacles at all -- but enough of them have progressed to keep me actively employed for more than forty years.
~ C. S. Forester, The Hornblower Companion