The voices / 52 fragments

Simon Van Booy

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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▷ Play this voice Search within this voice ↗Place in time ↗life faith wisdom death love knowledge truth happiness

Archive entries

01Undated

I think music is what language once aspired to be. Music allows us to face God on our own terms because it reaches beyond life.

Simon Van Booy / quote

02Undated

Children are the closest we have to wisdom, and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.

Simon Van Booy / quote

03Undated

I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can’t change.

Simon Van Booy / quote

04Undated

Death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept.

Simon Van Booy / quote

05Undated

Language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories. To reach out to people we'll never meet.It's the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones:The history of how you felt.

Simon Van Booy / quote

06Undated

...I like stories very much,” the priest said. “They help me understand myself better.

Simon Van Booy / quote

07Undated

Every moment is the paradox of now or never.

Simon Van Booy / quote

08Undated

[I] read books because I love them, not because I think I should read them.

Simon Van Booy / quote

09Undated

I wanted to explain that trusting is harder than being trusted.

Simon Van Booy / quote

10Undated

Life had called his name, and without thinking, he had stepped forward. He wondered if perhaps he was becoming the person he had always wanted to be.

Simon Van Booy / quote

11Undated

But those who seek only reassurance from life will never be more than tourists—seeing everything and trying to possess what can only be felt.Beauty is the shadow of imperfection.

Simon Van Booy / quote

12Undated

You were unsure which pain is worse -- the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.

Simon Van Booy / quote

13Undated

Your grief is something to be admired – the pain of severance. A scar where something used to be.

Simon Van Booy / quote

14Undated

Music helps us understand where we have come from but, more importantly, what has happened to us.

Simon Van Booy / quote

15Undated

We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.

Simon Van Booy / quote

16Undated

When a person is loved, they are granted the strength of all seas.

Simon Van Booy / quote

17Undated

Actually, years mean nothing. It's what's inside them.

Simon Van Booy / quote

18Undated

Coincidences mean you're on the right path.

Simon Van Booy / quote

19Undated

In the end I didn't know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.

Simon Van Booy / quote

20Undated

That's truth, Harvey, not what's written on a piece of paper or in blood too small to see - but the memory of how it felt being together.

Simon Van Booy / quote

21Undated

Dave once asked me what blind people dream about. Mostly in sound and feeling, I replied. At night I fall in love with a voice, and then wake to a feeling of physical loss. Sometimes I close my eyes to a chorus of “Happy Birthday!” The smell of cake and the sound of feet under the table. I awake in a body that’s too big. I also dream in motion and sensation. My father’s boat and the snore of the mast; the rough fabric of the safety harness and the rip of Velcro. The sun on my legs. And endless stretch of water impossible to imagine.

Simon Van Booy / quote

22Undated

Sometimes I wake up and lie still enough to hear a petal drop from the vase of flowers. Sometimes I lie awake and wish there was someone to hear my falling.

Simon Van Booy / quote

23Undated

Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in theuniverse, except that everyone else is still here.

Simon Van Booy / quote

24Undated

Anyone who is desperate or alone will agree there is comfort in routine.

Simon Van Booy / quote