* "You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun -and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist - that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us.
-By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
* “We were born and brought up with the maxim that “time is money.” We know exactly what money is, but what does the word “time” mean? The day is made up of twenty-fours and an infinite number of moments. We need to be aware of each of those moments and to make the most of them regardless of whether we're busy doing something or merely contemplating life. If we slow down, everything lasts much longer… but why not use that time to think about pleasant things and to feel glad simply to be alive?”
*… in order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them.
* …each of us contains our ancestors and all the generations to come. When we free ourselves, we are freeing all humanity.
*Athena: I was behaving like a little girl who has just found out that the world isn't full of ghosts and curses as grown-ups have taught us. It's full of love, regardless of how that love is manifested, a love that forgives our mistakes and redeems our sins.Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn’t what romantic songs tell us it is-love simply is. That is the testament of Athena or Sherine or Hagia Sophia- Love is. No definitions. Love and don’t ask too many questions. Just love.’
* Samira R. Khalil, 57, housewife, Athena’s Mother: ‘The blank pauses?”
Athena: “I learned calligraphy while I was in Dubai. I dance whenever I can, but music only exists because the pauses exist, and sentences only exist because the blank spaces exist. When I’m doing something, I feel complete, but no one can keep active twenty-four hours a day. As soon as I stop, I feel there’s something lacking. You’ve often said to me that I’m a naturally restless person, but I didn’t choose to be that way. I’d like to sit here quietly, watching television, but I can’t. My brain won’t stop. Sometimes, I think I’m going mad. I need always to be dancing, writing, selling land, taking care of Viorel, or reading whatever I find to read. Do you think that’s normal?”
Athena/ Sherine: “I’ve always been a very restless person. I work hard, spend too much time looking after my son, I dance like a mad thing, I learned calligraphy, I go to courses on selling, I read one book after another. But that’s all a way of avoiding those moments when nothing is happening, because those blank spaces give me a feeling of absolute emptiness, in which not a single crumb of love exists. My parents have always done everything they could for me, and I do nothing but disappoint them. But here, during the time we’ve spent together, celebrating nature and the Great Mother, I’ve realised that those empty spaces were starting to get filled up. They were transformed into pauses-the moment when the man lifts his hand from the drum before bringing it down again to strike it hard.
* And as you make those discoveries, you'll manage to fill in the blank spaces that all those writers left there on purpose to provoke the reader's imagination. And when you fill in the spaces, you'll start to believe in your own abilities.
*...If all the words were joined together, they wouldn't make sense, or, at the very least, they'd be extremely hard to decipher. The spaces are crucial…
* Dance to the point of exhaustion, as if you were a mountaineer climbing a hill, a sacred mountain. Dance until you are so out of breath that your organism is forced to obtain oxygen some other way, and it is that, in the end, that will cause you to lose your identity and your relationship with space and time. Dance only to the sound of percussion; repeat the process every day; know that, at a certain moment, your eyes will, quite naturally, close, and you will begin to see a light that comes from within, a light that answers your questions and develops your hidden powers.
* Pavel Podbielski, 57, owner of the Apartment:
'All we have to do is understand that we’re all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small, and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning. We can let ourselves be guided by the light emanating from the Vertex.'
'What do you mean by the Vertex? In Mathematics, it's the topmost angle of a triangle.'
'In life, too, it's the culminating point, the goal of all those who, like evryone else, make mistakes, butwho, even in their darkest moments, never lose sight of the light emanating from their hearts'.
*Athena: 'When I die, bury me standing, because I've spent all of my life on my knees'...
* …when you grow tired of being what you’re not, go and have fun and celebrate life…. In time, you’ll discover that it will give you more than pleasure, it will give you meaning.
* Deidre O'Neil's Protector:
"One day, I left my job and set up my own blacksmith’s business, which went completely wrong from the start. Just when I was starting to believe in life, things got markedly worse. One day I was working away and I saw that there before me was a symbol…
The unworked steel arrives in my workshop and I have to transform it into parts for cars, agricultural machinery, kitchen utensils. Do you know how that’s done? First, I heat the metal until its red-hot, then I beat it mercilessly with my heaviest hammer until the metal takes on the form I need. Then I plunge it into a bucket of cold water and the whole workshop is filled with the roar of steam, while the metal sizzles and crackles in response to the sudden change in temperature. I have to keep repeating that process until the object I’m making is perfect: once is not enough.’
‘Sometimes the steel I get simply can’t withstand such treatment. The heat, the hammer blows, the cold water cause it to crack. And I know that I’ll never be able to make it into a good ploughshare or an engine shaft. Then I throw it on the pile of scrap metal at the entrance to my forge.’
I know that God is putting me through the fire of afflictions. I’ve accepted the blows that life has dealt me, and sometimes I feel as cold and indifferent as the water that inflicts such pain on the steel. But my one prayer is this: “Please, God, my Mother, don’t give up until I’ve taken on the shape that you wish for me. Do this by whatever means you think best, for as long as you like, but never ever throw me on the scrap heap of souls.”
*Live now what others will only live in the future…
-The Witch of Portobello
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