The Saturday Writing Quote

deer heartAlthough some use stories as entertainment alone, tales are, in their oldest sense, a healing art. Some are called to this healing art, and the best, to my lights, are those who have lain with the story and found all its matching parts inside themselves and at depth … In the best tellers, I know, the stories grow out of their lives like roots grow a tree. The stories have grown them, grown them into who they are.
—Clarissa Pinkola Estes, American author and teacher (b. 1945)

(Photo by Leslie: Dear Heart)

The Saturday Writing Quote — a bonus quote

01_Barn_Pastel_WEBSome say the creative life is in ideas, some say it is in doing. It seems in most instances to be in simply being. It is not virtuosity, although that is very fine in itself. It is the love of something, having so much love for something—whether a person, a word, an image, an idea, the land, or humanity—that all that can be done with the overflow is to create. It is not a matter of wanting to, not a singular act of will; one solely must.

– Clarissa Pinkola Estés, from Women who Run with the Wolves

Painting: The Barn, pastel on garnet paper, by Leslie Budewitz