Gordon Atkinson

Quotes

• One thing is clear to me. You can't know everything you'd like to know. You can't do everything you'd like to do. You can't read everything you'd like to read. You must hold onto some things and let go of others. Learning to make that choice is one of the big lessons of this life.

• You can forget a lot of things, but you cannot forget a woman’s name and claim to love her.

• Love the ones you can. Touch the ones you can reach. Let the others go.

• You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone.

• I think people want their illusions and writers are mostly illusion. When you read their words, you read a flattened, incomplete version of the writer.

• I have been truthful all along the way. The truth is more interesting, and if you tell the truth you never have to cover your tracks.

• This isn't good or bad. It's just the way of things. Nothing stays the same.

• This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you’re doing, or it comes out flat. You can’t fake your way through this.

• I’m searching through all that has ever been hoped, in praise of what can never be known.

• Memory is a giggling sprite and will not be tamed. She takes flight the moment the present becomes the past.

• Doubting God's existence is okay and perfectly acceptable within Christianity as long as the person doubting remains obedient and committed to the Christian path.

• When you really trust someone, you have to be okay with not understanding some things.

• Good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you.

• I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.

• Knowing that there is worse pain doesn't make present pain hurt any less.

• When someone is giving you their theology, their God words, you should listen hard and be very gentle. The time to deliver your God words is when you are asked.

• Dignity comes not from control, but from understanding who you are and taking your rightful place in the world.

• Some things you do because you want to. Some things you do because of the needs of others in your family.

• No one forgives with more grace and love than a child.

• One of the joys we have in being human is in exercising our freedom to choose and to take each case as it comes to us. We are not robots who are forced into behaviors by their programming. We see things; we think about things; and we choose our course of action or beliefs appropriately. And as long as that remains true of us, we will live every day of our lives on one slippery slope or another. There is no reason to fear this.