The Crimson Portrait, Jody Shields

30Apr09

“All hospitals should have glass roofs,” he declared to a startled orderly. “The patients could watch the stars when they couldn’t sleep.” To be surrounded by such regular order was surely joy, he thought.

-p.84

If the human mind believes in the usefulness of a thing, which is in itself quite useless, it can happen that the thing actually helps the body through the power of the imagination.

-p.108

Silently, he directed her to pick up happiness like loose stones on a path or seek the quiet of a cloud, a tree, a bird, reflected in all their temporary perfection in water.

-p.219

All things are always changing,
But nothing dies. The spirit comes and goes,
Is housed wherever it wills, shifts residence
From beasts to men, from men to beasts, but always
It keeps on living. As the pliant wax
Is stamped with new designs, and is no longer
What once it was, but changes form, and still
Is pliant wax, so do I teach that spirit
Is evermore the same, though passing always
To ever changing bodies.

-p.271

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