A Quote by Rodman Philbrick

I think in some way it's like that for all of us, living with the ghosts of things that used to be, or never were. We're all of us haunted by yesterday, and we got no choice but to keep marching into our tomorrows.
Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.
Who can keep us from recreating our life as we would like it to be-as it could, and should be? No one but ourselves can keep us from being artists, rather than marching forward like mere consumers, corporate robots, sheep. No one but ourselves can keep us from dancing with life instead of goose-stepping. In every moment recognizing our own creative imagination, the living picture we paint on the canvas of our lives. Everything is imagination. And imagination is freedom, but it can also be conditioning, bondage.
I don't believe in aliens. I don't think aliens or ghosts like black people. We never get abducted; our houses never get haunted. It always happens in rural areas, where no ethnic people live. The day I see somebody from South Central Los Angeles say, 'Man, I got abducted yesterday,' then I'll believe it.
I got like a list of things at the beginning. There were ten things that Bryan made for each one of us, and he drew us our own personal picture of our character that was in color. And uh, I just have a copy of it, I think that they're going to do something special with the originals at the end, like presenting them to us.
A healthy soul must do two things for us. First, it must put some fire in our veins, keep us energized, vibrant, living with zest and full of hope as we sense that life is, ultimately beautiful and worth living ... Second, a healthy soul has to keep us fixed together. It has to continually give us a sense of who we are, where we came from, where we are going, and what sense there is in all of this.
As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of these people as an extension of your mother.
In order to do something you've never done, you've got to become someone you've never been. I think that all of us have great potential within us, but greatness is a choice; it's not our destiny. And in the pursuit of our dreams we are introduced to trials, failures and disappointments , which take us to the door of discovery and greatness.
The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is 'Do not fear.' It's in there over two hundred times. That means a couple of things, if you think about it. It means we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn't let fear boss us around. Before I realized we were supposed to fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, keep us from getting humiliated. And I guess it serves that purpose. But fear isn't only a guide to keep us safe; it's also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.
No one can travel so far that he does not make some progess each day. So let us never give up. Then we shall move forward daily in the Lord's way. And let us never despair because of our limited success. Even though it is so much less than we would like, our labour is not wasted when today is better than yesterday!
I never lied to you. (Kiara) Of course you did –you said you could see the real us– that we weren’t as bad as we claimed. But you didn’t and, just like everyone else, so long as we risk our lives to protect and save you, we’re okay. But the moment we have to make a choice not ours, the moment you see what our pasts have made us, you’re horrified by the truth and hate us for it like we had some kind of choice in what we are. (Syn)
If he could have his way, Satan would distract us from our heritage. He would have us become involved in a million and one things in this life-probably none of which is very important in the long run-to keep us from concentrating on the things that are really important, particularly the reality that we are God's children. He would like us to forget about home and family values. He'd like to keep us so busy with comparatively insignificant things that we don't have time to make the effort to understand where we came from, whose children we are, and how glorious our ultimate homecoming can be!
Well. I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.
Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts?...Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts....They're the ones who haunt us. The ones who have left us behind." "Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn the corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles." "The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin.
The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads -none of us ever got enough of that. We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of - unconditional love, unconditional attention. Most of us didn't get enough.
But I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines.
Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history. (243)
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