The idea is to take the most ordinary things and make them extraordinary, as Gerard Manley Hopkins does in his poems.
I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read.
One of the most extraordinary things about being a spiritual teacher is the rare privilege of being able to look deeply into the very souls of many human beings at the same time.
I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary.
Think of energy almost like emotional electricity. It has a powerful way of uniting ordinary people, their connected spirit, to do extraordinary things.
When people send people on summer camps or bonding trips, they send them to do things like high rope climbing or extraordinary things. And when you do extraordinary things with people, like fighting battles or simulating huge wars, you do bond very quickly.
We have the wrong impression of life. We think the very big incidents of our lives are consequences of huge dilemmas or major decisions. If we paid attention, we'd realize that the determining incidents in our lives are ordinary things.
People are dying to tell you their secrets; it's just a matter of getting the conversation going in the right direction. If you just let people fill the silence, they will let you the most extraordinary things. I sometimes wonder if afterward they remember what they've said.
Illegitimacy is important for the socialisation of little girls and especially little boys. If you have large numbers of young men growing up who never see an adult male doing the ordinary things men do, then you get chaos. This is not a moral statement, it's an empirical statement.
Corky is an ordinary person who does extraordinary things. He is a true inspiration, but he doesn't know that he's an inspiration.
