Robert Hellenga Quotes & Sayings

There was a time I didn't know your name
Why should I worry, cry in vain
but now she's gone, and I don't worry
cause I'm sittin' on top of the world. — Robert Hellenga

Sometimes pain is God's megaphone, his only way to get our attention. — Robert Hellenga

Sometimes it takes a little jolt to make us appreciate what we've got. — Robert Hellenga

The only meaning our lives have is the meaning we give them. — Robert Hellenga

All I know is that my life is filled with little pockets of silence. When I put a record on the turntable, for example, there's a little interval-between the time the needle touches down on the record and the time the music actually starts-during which my heart refuses to beat. All I know is that between the rings of the telephone, between the touch of a button and the sound of the radio coming on, between the dimming of the lights at the cinema and the start of the film, between the lightning and the thunder, between the shout and the echo, between the lifting of a baton and the opening bars of a symphony, between the dropping of a stone and the plunk that comes back from the bottom of a well, between the ringing of the doorbell and the barking of the dogs I sometimes catch myself, involuntarily, listening for the sound of my mother's voice, still waiting for the tape to begin. — Robert Hellenga

What to do with the past? There was so much of it. — Robert Hellenga

He wondered what you had to do to lose your driver's license in Italy. — Robert Hellenga

He doesn't believe in talking too much about art, especially while you're looking at it. The pressure to appreciate is the great enemy of actual enjoyment. Most people don't know what they like because they feel obligated to like so many different things. They feel they're supposed to be overwhelmed, so instead of looking, they spend their time thinking up something to say, something intelligent, or at least clever. — Robert Hellenga

She heard melody and harmony and counterpoint; he heard something calling him from far, far away. — Robert Hellenga

He knew that he'd known her for less than a week, but now that she was gone he was continually probing his feelings for her, the way he might probe a sore tooth with his tongue, engaging her in imaginary conversations, imagining her saying such delightful things. — Robert Hellenga

Fussing over food was important. It gave a shape to the day: breakfast, lunch, dinner; beginning, middle, end. — Robert Hellenga

However far back you go you will find all experiences linked by slender threads. — Robert Hellenga

Death was a lens that would reveal things as they really were: what was important would assume its true importance; what was unimportant would recede into the shadows. — Robert Hellenga