Kathleen Norris
Kathleen Norris
Kathleen Thompson Norriswas a popular American novelist and newspaper columnist. She was one of the most widely read and highest paid female writers in the United States for nearly fifty years, from 1911 to 1959. Her stories appeared in the Atlantic, The American Magazine, McClure's, Everybody's, Ladies' Home Journal and Woman's Home Companion, and she wrote 93 novels, many of which were best sellers. She used her fiction to promote values including the sanctity of marriage, the nobility of motherhood,...
children book pride
When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening. . . . I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.
beautiful spring book
It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?
baking bread ordinary
The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.
memorable unhappy should
When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?
ruth left
When you come to a place where you have to left or right,' says Sister Ruth, 'go straight ahead.
mean cost may
The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the “I do” of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married.
men eternity this-life
There are men I could spend eternity with. But not this life.
years may classic
Like faith, marriage is a mystery. The person you're committed to spending your life with is known and yet unknown, at the same time remarkably intimate and necessarily other. The classic seven-year itch may not be a case of familiarity breeding ennui and contempt, but the shock of having someone you thought you knew all too well suddenly seem a stranger. When that happens, you are compelled to either recommit to the relationship or get the hell out. There are many such times in a marriage.
humility exercise self
To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.
men ideas conventional
Men are more conventional than women and much slower to change their ideas.
world monk poet
Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.
loneliness writing world
I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.
attention pay events
Pay close attention to objects, events and natural phenomenon that would otherwise get chewed up in the daily grind.
giving feelings lucky
If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.