Touchstones: Duane, Robbins

I tend to gather quotations. I harvest the words and phrases in books or in conversation that arrest, jar, sear, soothe, explicate, or edify something somewhere somehow for me. There may be a sense of recognition, a glimpse of the past or of a possible future. Or, there may be a revolution, a shift in perspective, that sudden awareness where before there had been something only now grasped as false, facile, unearned, unreliable. Once or twice, I have felt caught, gripped, even gutted. When I've been lucky, there's been growth, an enlargement in my sense of the world, or in myself.

Here are two that I return to again and again. I'll let you imagine how each strikes me. How does each strike you?

The first voice is Dan Duane's, from his Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on the California Coast:

"If there's a relief in discovering the life you most desperately dream of living, there's also a fear in discovering your soul's needs--after all, how then deny them?"

The second voice is Tom Robbins', from the narrator of his Jitterbug Perfume:

"Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer."

Feeling a bit thirsty, a bit in need of comfort. Cactus, here I come.