Literary Birthday – 27 January – Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Happy Birthday, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, born 27 January 1945.

10 Quotes

1. Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer … and on the reader.
2. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.
3. It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires.
4. If you’ve lost focus, just sit down and be still. Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some away, and it will renew itself. You need do no more.
5. I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
6. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.
7. The psyches and souls of women also have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place.
8. When seeking guidance, don’t ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.
9. Forgiveness is an act of creation. You can choose from many ways to do it. You can forgive for now, forgive till then, forgive till the next time, forgive but give no more chances it’s a whole new game if there is another incident. You can give one more chance, give several more chances, give many chances, give chances only if. You can forgive part, all, or half of the offense. You can devise a blanket of forgiveness. You decide.
10. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés is an American Jungian analyst, post-trauma specialist, author and spoken word artist. She is the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.

by Amanda Patterson

Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar