Inner Story Quotes & Sayings

Joseph's story just parted company with the volumes of self-help books and all the secret-to-success formulas that direct the struggler to an inner power ("dig deeper"). Joseph's story points elsewhere ("look higher"). — Max Lucado

Don't you dare feel guilty for letting those who dim your light, go. Not everyone you meet deserves to be a character in your story. — Nikki Rowe

The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events and gives the listener a path through these events that leads to some fragment of wisdom. The one who hears takes the story in, even to a place not visible or conscious to the mind, yet there. In this inner place a story from another life suffers a subtle change. As it enters the memory of the listener it is augmented by reflection, by other memories, and even the body hearing and responding in the moment of the telling. By such transmissions, consciousness is woven. — Susan Griffin

They are part of his imagination, part of his story, and so, part of him. If he would not hurt you, then it only makes sense that they would not be able to do so either. They are the deepest parts of his subconscious. Shrapnel of his inner self. As you might have learned, they have the same desires and conflicts as their maker. As separate pieces, freed from the soul and from the confines of a human conscious, however, they develop minds of their own. And, as demons created in the dreamworld, they are compelled by law to answer to its queen. That is why they attempted to harm you but in the end could not. — Kelly Creagh

The story of the Zen Master whose only response was always "Is that so?" shows the good that comes through inner nonresistance to events, that is to say, being at one with what happens. The story of the man whose comment was invariably a laconic "Maybe" illustrates the wisdom of nonjudgment, and the story of the ring points to the fact of impermanence which, when recognized, leads to nonattachment. Nonresistance, nonjudgement, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living. — Eckhart Tolle

Academic envelope serves only to protect everything the story says and does not say, an inner afflatus always on the verge of being dispersed at contact with the air, the echo of a vanished knowledge revealed in the penumbra and in tacit allusions. Torn — Italo Calvino

I do need to find inner tranquillity and get into a "zone" before I switch on the computer to work on a story. Only after this do I enter the story world, where I meet the characters and, together, we work through the day and night. — Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Among other things they picked out a detail that Charles had been offered the Governorship of Hong Kong in its dying days by Thatcher in return for shutting up about the inner cities. He quite rightly in my view led the paper on this story. — Anthony Holden

In film you can use images exclusively and narrate a whole story very quickly, but you don't always so easily find the form in cinema to dig deeper into human thoughts and emotions. And in a novel you can much more easily express a character's inner thoughts and feelings. — Laura Esquivel

You consider issues, but not deeply enough.
Your spring is frozen. Faith is a flowing.
Don't try to forge cold iron.
Study David, the ironsmith, and dancer, and musician.
Move into the sun. You're wrapped in fantasy
and inner mumbling. When spirit enters, a man begins to wander freely,
escaped and overrunning through the garden plants,
spontaneous and soaking in.
Now a miracle story ... — Rumi

A romantic relationship might very well have been initiated by God, but the moment our focus moves from our Prince to a human love story is the moment we cease to guard our sanctuary, and our entire foundation for success crumbles into ashes. A relationship that leads us closer to our Prince and carefully protects our inner sanctuary is the key to discovering romance as it was truly intended to be ... a little taste of heaven on earth. — Leslie Ludy

Her silent singing wrapped around the story she was telling herself, which she extended further every night on the deck. (Averill often told herself stories
the activity seemed to her as unavoidable as dreaming.) Her singing was a barrier set between the world in her head and the world outside, between her body and the onslaught of the stars. — Alice Munro

Don't judge me. You're not living my life and you know nothing about my battles. You have not the faintest idea of how I manage to smile in the middle of storms or how I transform my despair into delight. You have not the faintest idea of what I have gone through and why I am who I am today. This is my life and only I know the real story. The strains, the struggles, the sorrows are all mine. They're not for you to assess or evaluate; I give that authority to none, for My Guiding Light is Within. - Manprit Kaur — Manprit Kaur

The inner story, though the same in essence for all, is always single and unique in each human being, never before lived and never to be repeated. — Helen M. Luke

Howard's enchanting Hospice obeys its own magical inner logic with excellent prose and a sadness that will split open hearts. You have in your hands a story that is inquisitive, gripping, and triumphant. — Deb Olin Unferth

Characterization requires a constant back-and-forth between the exterior events of the story and the inner life of the character. — David Corbett

I love writing picture books and story books because of the exciting, visual life that artists and illustrators give to them. And most of all, I love writing novels because of the inner, emotional journeys that they take me on. Hopefully, the reader comes with me! — Berlie Doherty

I came to recognize the landscape of my life in the lives of many women. Their stories and the places they spoke of spanned a world beyond my experience, from mill towns to suburbs, from logging camps to ethnic neighborhoods, from inner cities to Indian reservations. Few shared my place of origin or the events of my life, but many, it seems, shared my experience. Listening to their stories, I came to understand how women can be isolated by circumstances as well as by distance, and how our experiences, though geographically distinct, often translated into the same feelings. Away from the physical presence of my past, I found it easy to argue that what mattered most was the story, the truth of what we tell ourselves, the versions we pass along to our daughters. But as I stood in the living room of my rock house that afternoon, I was again reminded of the enormous power of this prairie, its silence and the whisper I made inside it. I had forgotten how easily one person can be lost here. — Judy Blunt

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. — John Updike

Nine Years Under is a sparkling debut
brimming with love and bursting with life. Booker's Baltimore is equal parts The Wire and The Cosby show. She doesn't shrink from the realities of life in an inner city funeral home, but she is also a loving witness, documenting the big hearted community that takes care of its own. Told with compassion, wit, and good old fashioned story telling, Sheri Booker gives us unforgettable characters who will make you laugh right up until they break your heart. — Tayari Jones

If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples; if it be unfamiliar, make it figure as part of a story; if it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain. Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long. Let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your subject, if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to something else, variety in unity being the secret of all interesting talk and thought. — William James

The story of survival is a nice metaphor for our experience making this movie, finding your inner strength and powering through and getting to the endpoint alive. — Katie Aselton

Anytime I was denying my inner self, I knew absolutely nothing. — A.D. Posey

Different narrative forms naturally lend themselves to different aspects of existence. The novel is ideal for presenting the inner lives of its characters, the play is ideal for showing people in a room talking and movies are ideal for showing large metal objects hurtling through the air. — Todd Alcott

When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrating inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice. — Vivian Gornick

Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems. Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time. And I loved her for that. — Dorothy Allison

I'm not trying as a writer to be smart or to understand the inner workings of my narrator, I'm trying to survive the typing of this story. — Ron Carlson

A man always revealed his own inner story in his actions and expressions. A man's past deeds foretold his future and allowed anyone with half a brain to divine the path he would take. — Alice Hoffman

Raw and honest is what I go for [in my style of shooting]. I am looking for your inner beauty. The outside tells a story ... But together is raw honesty. — Nikki Sixx

Yes, so many love me and all I love. But they do not come to Me as little children with open minds and hearts asking to be so filled with My love, wisdom and grace. They are already so filled with ideas they have decided about Me and My great love, that they inhibit the very most inner knowing of My essence. Books and books are filled with what man thinks of Me, not what man knows of Me. And the words I have given that have been heard have been for years upon years misinterpreted, as their original meanings seem to be so absurd that their minds cannot begin to comprehend.

Listen Hear, A Divine Love Story — Debra Clemente

Have you ever felt a stirring in your heart as a touching story brought tears to your eyes or as you heard a soaring symphony or a captivating song on the radio that opened a new window in your soul? Maybe you have felt a similar exhilaration while watching a sunset, camping out under the night sky, or holding a newborn babe. Something inside of you quickened, and for a moment, some heavenly beauty connected your inner self with the divine. C. S. Lewis referred to such experiences as joy. These are remnants and reminders of the perfect world God designed for us to live in - the shadow of places He longs to take us to, the reality of the other world He's preparing for us. — Sally Clarkson

We all learn to carry so much unnecessary regret. We drag it around behind ourselves and wear it sewn into the inner lining of our shadow. I think that the heart of every ghost story ever told is awash with the soft faded autumnal color of pure unredeemable regret. — Steve Vernon

Pity moment, blah! Let's turn it around! We do not even need to go into the story of it. We acknowledge this moment and release it. We love and accept and forgive ourselves. And we acknowledge that this is a tiny stitch, a brief pinprick in the needlepoints we are creating of our lives. And we also acknowledge that this lifetime of ours is but a tiny little stitch in the ever-expanding, infinite needlepoint of the Universe. Self-pity is not a reason good enough for us to be out of alignment with peace. — Alaric Hutchinson

She imagined that each of them saw the story in a different light based on their own experience, or lack of it. That, then, was the beauty of opera to her. Giving the gift of a performance, of song that was transformed after it left her mouth into a different story for each member of the audience as it entered their thoughts, each night, dependent only on their unique and hidden inner needs. — J.J. Brown

We write to strengthen our soul and the spirit of other souls. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Find your Element you may have to challenge your own beliefs about yourself. Whatever age you are, you've almost certainly developed an inner story about what you can do and what you can't do; what you're good at and what you're not good at. You may be right, of course. But for all the reasons we've discussed, you may be misleading yourself. Part of making sense of where you are now is to understand how you got here. So if you do doubt your aptitudes in certain areas, think about how these doubts were first formed. Are there other ways of developing them that you'd — Ken Robinson

Step Away from the Mean Girls ...
... and say bye-bye to feeling bad about your looks.
Are you ready to stop colluding with a culture that makes so many of us feel physically inadequate? Say goodbye to your inner critic, and take this pledge to be kinder to yourself and others.
This is a call to arms. A call to be gentle, to be forgiving, to be generous with yourself. The next time you look into the mirror, try to let go of the story line that says you're too fat or too sallow, too ashy or too old, your eyes are too small or your nose too big; just look into the mirror and see your face. When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step toward transforming your experience of the world. — Oprah Winfrey

The short story is the art form that deals with the individual when there is no longer a society to absorb him, and when he is compelled to exist, as it were, by his own inner light. — Frank O'Connor

Simply read a child's story that he or she is writing for school, and you will discover some of the inner struggles with which the young person is trying to cope. — John S. Savage

Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel that I have read over and over and over again. Tess is a pure child who has an inner glow none of the others in the book possess. They reject her because she is different, and they try in every possible manner to destroy her, because they are jealous. It is an extraordinary love story. — Laetitia Casta

As has already been noted, fantastic literature developed at precisely the moment when genuine belief in the supernatural was on the wane, and when the sources provided by folklore could safely be used as literary material. It is almost a necessity, for the writer as well as for the reader of fantastic literature, that he or she should not believe in the literal truth of the beings and objects described, although the preferred mode of literary expression is a naive realism. Authors of fantastic literature are, with a few exceptions, not out to convert, but to set down a narrative story endowed with the consistency and conviction of inner reality only during the time of the reading: a game, sometimes a highly serious game, with anxiety and fright, horror and terror. — Franz Rottensteiner

When you write your first novel you don't really know what you're doing. There may be writers out there who are brilliant, incisive and in control from their first 'Once upon a time'. I'm not one of them. Every once upon a time for me is another experience of white-water rafting in a leaky inner tube. And I have this theory that while the Story Council has its faults, it does have some idea that if books are going to get written, authors have to be able to write them. — Robin McKinley

Stanley must have realized that this postponement would probably be fatal. But while he did not give up, he never for a moment thought of abandoning his African quest [...] Yet Stanley still longed for the security of marriage, and hoped he could find Livingstone and marry Katie. [...] The romantic side of his nature told him that their story ought to end in marriage: the workhouse boy, having distinguished himself beyond all expectations, weds the daughter of the respectable local gentleman, and they live happily ever afterwards in a big house
[...] But Katie had never understood his inner conviction of being chosen for a great task. — Tim Jeal

Knot the tie and go to work, unknot the tie and go to sleep. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I sing. I get out the hammer and start knocking in the wooden pegs that affix the meaning to the landscape, the inner life to the body, the names to the things. I float too much to wander, like you, in the real world. I envy it but that's the dealio - you're a train and I'm a trainstation and when I try to guess your trajectory I end up telling my own story. — Richard Siken

Speaking as a writer, I'm not interested in trends, I want to write books that are honest, with characters as true to the inner world of the story as I can make them. — Susan Patron

But if your story is about the inner workings of competitive quilting, you'd better make it short and extra witty. People drift off when you stop talking about stuff that isn't, well, them. The — Scott Adams

The creative process is a love story that never ends. The ideas are like suitors competing for your attention. You may have relationships, with multiple ideas, at once. You may devote yourself completely to one idea, for a awhile, but the affairs will never end. There will always be more ideas to romance and more concepts to develop. And all for that wonderful moment when you get to gaze at the complete creation and hold perfection in your arms, for one blissful moment ... before your inner-critic starts tearing it to shreds. — Jaeda DeWalt

It seemed to me an error in reasoning for a man to isolate a woman he loves from all the circumstances in which he met her and in which she lives, to try, with dogged inner concentration, to purify her of everything that is not her self, which is to say also of the story that they lived through together and that gives their ove its shape.
After all, what I love in a woman is not what she is in and for herself, but the side of herself she turns toward me, what she is for me. I love her as a character in our common love story. — Milan Kundera

When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer lives, a cautionary tale of the seductions of the written word. It became a vision of the afterlife as a library, of heaven as a funky old camper filled with everything you've ever read. What is this heaven? What is it we desire from the hours, weeks, lifetimes we devote to books? What would you sacrifice to sit in that comfy chair with perfect light for an afternoon in eternity, reading the perfect book, forever? — Audrey Niffenegger

Don't Shoot is a work of moral philosophy that reads like a crime novel - Immanuel Kant meets Joseph Wambaugh. It's a fascinating, inspiring, and wonderfully well written story of one man's quest to solve a problem no one thought could be solved: the scourge of inner city gang violence This is a vitally important work that has the potential to usher in a new era in policing. — John Seabrook

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it. — A. N. Wilson

The secrets that the characters hold are held back from the audience, and that's such a delight to hold onto. When you're playing scenes, it gives you an inner dialogue that allows you to really immerse yourself as the actor, in every scene that you're playing. Nothing felt expositional. Nothing felt like we were just doing it to move the story along. There was a reason these characters were saying what they're saying. It was a gift, really. — Tom Hughes

The promise of Plath's work was that a woman could de-fang the charges of hysteria by owning them. Unlike Solanas, who seemingly never saw herself as flawed or sick, or Wollstonecraft and Bronte, who swept their flaws under the carpet so as not to compromise themselves, or even Jacobs, who was honest, but played a delicate game of apologizing for "sins" that were not her fault so as to reach her audience, Plath took her own flaws as her subject, and thereby made them the source of her authority. By detailing her own overabundant inner life, no matter how huge and frightening it was -- her sexuality, her suicidality, her broken relationships, her anger at the world or at men -- she could, in some crucial way, own that part of her story, simply because she chose to tell it. And, if she could do this, other women could do it, too. — Sady Doyle

The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true message travels straight to the spirit. — Juliet Marillier

Endurance of life problems, spirit of survival. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think. — Marlene Van Niekerk

Instead, the Buddha replied, "I am going to send you back to the same forest, but I will provide you with the only protection you will need." This was the first teaching of metta meditation. The Buddha encouraged the monks not only to recite the metta phrases but to actually practice them. As these stories all seem to end so happily, so did this one - it is said that the monks went back and practiced metta, so that the tree spirits became quite moved by the beauty of the loving energy filling the forest, and resolved to care for and serve the monks in all ways. The inner meaning of the story is that a mind filled with fear can still be penetrated by the quality of lovingkindness. Moreover, a mind that is saturated by lovingkindness cannot be overcome by fear; even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind. — Sharon Salzberg

A myth is a fantasy, a preferred lie, a foundational story, a hypnotic trance, an identity game, a virtual reality, one that can be either inspirational or despairing. It is a story in which I cast myself; it is my inner cinema, the motion picture of my inner reality - one that moves all the time. No diagnosis can fix the myth, no cure can settle it, because our inner life is precisely what, in us, will not lie still. — Ginette Paris

There's something about you,
Your eyes speak a story in a language only known to my soul. The kind of communication we as humans dream about, the one that reaches into the core of who you are and loves you for it.
It doesn't appear often or by accident & when it happens you just know " There's something about you ". — Nikki Rowe

If only you could see the whole picture, if you knew the whole story, you would realize that no problem ever comes to you that does not have a purpose in your life, that cannot contribute to your inner growth. — Peace Pilgrim

This is the problem with over-crowded inner-city schools there aren't enough parts for everyone in the nativity story. — Karl Pilkington

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs. — Sue Monk Kidd

Being reflective also means listening to your inner self with new ears. The truth is, we think we've heard our own story so much that we stop listening to it! We become like the people in our lives who we complain don't listen to us. With reflection, we listen freshly to our selves, the way we would like to be listened to. There — Helene Brenner

When we meditate, we go beyond the swirl of thoughts, memories and emotions that tend to keep us stuck in our ego's story of who we are. We enter an expanded state of awareness and discover our own inner fountain of joy, a source of happiness that isn't dependent on anyone or anything. — Deepak Chopra

Stories are not just entertainment, not to me. A story records and transmits the experience of being human. It teaches us what it's like to be who we are. Nothing but art can do this. There is no science that can capture the inner life. No words can describe it directly. We can only speak of it in metaphors. We can only say: it's like this - this story, this picture, this song. — Andrew Klavan

Even after years of constant abuse from her stepmother and her stepsisters, Cinderella remained a good person with high hopes. She never stopped believing in herself and in the good of the world. And although she married the prince in the end, Cinderella always had inner happiness. Her story shows that even in the worst of situations- even when it seems no one in the world appreciates you-as long as you have hope, everything can get better... — Chris Colfer

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story. — Denise Mina

There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It's funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don't want a baby? Don't have one. I don't want to get married? I won't. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don't apologize. Don't explain. Don't ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it. — Shonda Rhimes

A short story relies on those values that make poetry and jazz what they are: tension, rhythms, inner beat, into unforeseen within foreseen parameters — Julio Cortazar

We do not want to deny existence. Yet we also do not want to limit existence. Thus, we observe and honor without forming opinion, labeling, or adding a story to the object of our observation. — Alaric Hutchinson

You can hear now. Your inner ear is formed.
I shout "I love you" into the bedroom. Then I feel stupid. Then I don't. This is pretty much the story of my life. — Suzanne Finnamore

Re-claim your power, don't you dare shrink your worth for someone elses glory.
They'll attempt to sabotage your greatnes but it is you that will feel the aftermath of your unwritten story. — Nikki Rowe

No one can soothe my inner being like you. No one can make me look to the future with such excitement like you did. No one can understand me, fulfill me, fit me like you did." ~Emma Ranstein — Lindsay Detwiler

My inner voice told me at that point,
"you shouldn't be caring about her, just move on! You have to improve your life and live apart from her"

But my absurd heart was pleading,
"you love her, you idiot. She is your life sphere, one more try at least for the sake of kindness. — Qalandar Nawaz

If you just tell the story of what the storys about, then it sparks curiosity, but I think it also arouses suspicion, as you say, that it could be overly sentimental. But it so isnt. And I think it was all about doing the inner work and then underplaying everything. — Gerard Butler

FEARLESS is a vivid account of one man's journey from all-American boy to all-American hero. Blehm's writing takes you beyond the battlefield and right to the heart of the personal battles, sacrifices, and triumphs of one of America's elite warriors. Anyone looking for an inspiring story of inner strength and courage will be richly rewarded by this book. — Eric Greitens

Delilah's mother cleans other people's houses, and she reminds me a bit of another story from Rapscullio's shelves, about a young scullery maid who possesses both glass footwear and inner beauty, which makes a prince fall head over heels for her. — Jodi Picoult

Your past can either cripple you or empower you. You choose. You can let your feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and shame keep you working jobs that suck your soul. Or you can go out and, with a little luck and guidance, write a new story of your life. It can be post-traumatic stress or it can be post-traumatic growth that defines you. You know as well as I do that in reality you don't have a choice.
You know as well as I do that in reality you don't have a choice. Your skeletons chase you no matter where you hide. It's about time to find your inner strength to pull through and make something of yourself. — Lucas Carlson

So. If this was some normal fictional young-adult book, this is the part of the story where after the film, the entire high school would rise to their feet and applaud, and Earl and I would find True Acceptance and begin to Truly Believe in Ourselves and Rachel would somehow miraculously make a recovery, or maybe she would die but we would Always Have Her to Thank for Making Us Discover Our Inner Talent, and Madison would become my girlfriend and I would get to nuzzle her boobs like an affectionate panda cub whenever I wanted.
That is why fiction sucks. None of that happened. Instead, pretty much everything happened that I was afraid of, except worse. — Jesse Andrews

Are you an artist?
I ask this question a lot. Generally, this question is met with a pause and a slightly blank look. In that moment I can almost hear the inner dialogue: "Um, Artist? Well, no. I make stuff. Sometimes. But an "Artist" with a capital A? I want to say yes, but that would be terrifying". What actually comes out of the person's mouth is usually, "Oh. Uh, not really". I should mention that this answer, and those blank looks, are always from adults. When I ask kids the same question, I get a very different response. It goes a little something like this: "Are you an artist?" "Yes". No hesitation. No thinking it over first. They have never sold a painting, or published a story, but they have absolutely no problem answering me with a loud, resounding yes. — Danielle Krysa

Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision. — Joyce Carol Oates

My inner Jiminy was screaming at me to stop playing with fire again, but I was a moth drawn to a flaming hot drummer. — Kristen Hope Mazzola

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being. — Rumi

Soul Mountain, the story of one man's quest for inner peace and freedom. — Gao Xingjian

Who doesn't have a dark place somewhere inside him that comes out sometimes when he's looking in a mirror? Dark and light, we are all made out of shadows like the shapes on a motion-picture screen. A lot of people think that the function of the projector is to throw light on the screen, just as the function of the story-teller is to stop fooling around and simply tell what happened, but the dark places must be there too, because without the dark places there would be no image and the figure on the screen would not exist. — MacDonald Harris