29+ David James Duncan Quotes On David Duncan, Creative And Thoughtful

David James Duncan is an American novelist, essayist and environmental activist. He is best known for his novels The River Why and The Brothers K, both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He is also the author of the non-fiction work My Story as Told by Water, a collection of essays about rivers and the environment. Following is our collection on famous quotes by David James Duncan on david duncan, love, creative.

Top 10 David James Duncan Quotes

1. And into the brown paper bag of my heart, Eddy slipped a smile.
2. To me, it's a great day every time I receive a letter from somebody who climbed inside one of my books, inhabited it for a while, learned a little something, and emerged grateful.
3. ... the best way to strip the allure and dreaminess from a lifelong dream is, very often, simply to have it come true.
4. But churches always have been the leading cause of the need for churches.
5. My books are inert as cordwood till a readers imagination ignites one and an old flame jumps to life.
6. When experience flies into realms that language cannot touch, honesty demands beyond-language.
7. You, me, & your papa are 3 of the tiny percentage of souls on this miserable earth who've figured out that playing ball is the highest purpose God ever invented the human male body for.
8. The principles that will save Earth's life are the same principles that save the living souls of humans: ineluctable spiritual principles.
9. We hear nothing so clearly as what comes out of silence.
10. I'd taken a big fat crisis off my shoulders and loaded it all on Jesus, which seemed unfair in a way, but was exactly what the Bible recommended.

David James Duncan Short Quotes

• The environment, what surrounds you, is so alive and delightful and complex.
• I started having doubts right on top of my certainty.
• Fiction writing feels more honest to me.

David James Duncan Famous Quotes And Sayings

Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of being, and he just wandered the empty beaches and misty headlands in a state of serene confusion and awe. — David James Duncan

As a lifelong student of the world’s wisdom literature, it is my duty to inform students that “ridding the world of evil” is a goal very different from any recommended by Jesus, Buddha, or Muhammad, though not so different from some recommended by the Josephs Stalin and McCarthy and by Mao Tse Tung. — David James Duncan

I wish there really was such a thing as a Time-Clock Puncher, though. I wish some gigantic, surly, stone-fisted Soap Mahoney-type guy went around the world smashing every clock in sight till there weren't any more and people got so confused about when to go to the mill or school or church that they gave up and did something interesting instead. — David James Duncan

I'd trapped myself in a script.... But to be scripted at all is to be prepackaged, programmed, pinned to a page. Only the unwritten can truly live a life. So who I was, what I was, had to be unwritten. — David James Duncan

Punctuationally speaking, wonder is a period at the end of a statement we've long taken for granted, suddenly looking up and seeing the sinuous curve of a tall black hat on its head, and realizing it was a question mark all along. — David James Duncan

The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that the “sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew.” I have seen this unity with my eyes, heard it with my ears, felt it with all my being. — David James Duncan

--I truly and deeply wanted to kill him. And I believe I could have done it, with nothing but my hands. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Peter had an arm around me. "Let it go, Kade," he was whispering very gently, though his arm was nearly crushing me. "Open your fists," he said, "and let go of the coals. — David James Duncan

Wonder is like grace, in that it's not a condition we grasp; it grasps us. Wonder is not an obligatory element in the search for truth. We can seek truth without wonder's assistance. But seek is all we'll do; there will be no finding. Unless wonder descends, unlocks us ... truth is unable to enter. Wonder may be the aura of truth, the halo of it. Or something even closer. Wonder may be the caress of truth, touching our very skin. — David James Duncan

Is the work of sun worshippers to honor those who think they can see the sun? Or to worship the sun? — David James Duncan

Anyone too undisciplined, too self-righteous or too self-centered to live in the world as it is has a tendency to idealize a world which ought to be. But no matter what political or religious direction such idealists choose, their visions always share one telling characteristic: in their utopias, heavens or brave new worlds, their greatest personal weakness suddenly appears to be a strength. — David James Duncan

Ecosystems are holy. The word "environmental" is a deadly compromise itself. It's a policy word that lives only in the head, and barely there. — David James Duncan

Music is just a word for something we love largely because it consists of things that words can't express. Likewise, the heart is just a word for something in us that music sometimes touches. — David James Duncan

The bad thing about falling into pieces is that it hurts. The good thing about it is that once you're lying there in shards you've got nothing left to protect, and so have no reason not to be honest — David James Duncan

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself. — David James Duncan

Faith of Cranes is a love song to the beauty and worth of the lives we are able to lead in the world just as it is, troubled though it be... The writing is honest, intensely lived, and overflowing with heart: broken, mended, and whole. — David James Duncan

But I finally concluded that it is an inalienable right of lovers everywhere to become temporarily worthless to the world, it may even be their duty. — David James Duncan

Life Lessons by David James Duncan

1. David James Duncan teaches us to appreciate the beauty of the natural world and to recognize the importance of living in harmony with it.
2. He also encourages us to think about our own mortality and to make the most of the time we have in this life.
3. Through his work, Duncan reminds us of the power of storytelling and the importance of cultivating a sense of wonder and awe in our lives.