Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes

Anger is just a demand for change, a passionate wish for things to be different.

I think that people get experiences, and out of those experiences come meaning and ideas. It's like watching a rose bush grow.

Cancer changes your whole life.

Life wastes nothing. Over and over again every molecule that has ever been is gathered up by the hand of life to be reshaped into yet another form. p 259

It is not that we have a soul, but that we are a soul.

Silence is a place of great power and healing.

A shaman is someone who has a wound that will not heal. He sits by the side of the road with his open wound exposed.

Illiness could be considered a Western form of meditation.

People are waking up in their homes - without conferences. They're waking up because life is waking them up, not because of some conference called "Body and Soul."

The wisdom in the story of the most educated and powerful person is often not greater than the wisdom in the story of a child, and the life of a child can teach us as much as the life of a sage.

We may need to let go of our beliefs and ideas about life in order to have life.

I don't think there's such a thing as a bad emotion. The only bad emotion is a stuck emotion.

Religion is a bridge to the spiritual, but the spiritual lies beyond religion.

Being alive is being aware, being able to be touched and moved and changed, being able to respond rather than to react, being able to see and hear.

Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve.

The way towards freedom from a situation often lies in acceptance of the situation.

The sacred lives beyond labels and judgment, in the wood-of-no-names.

When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness.

I think ideas only lead to change for intellectual people; and not even them. What really leads to change is experience. Life itself is the teacher.

Most of the things that give life its depth, meaning, and value are impervious to science.

Medicine is as close to love as it is to science, and its relationships matter even at the edge of life itself.

Inner peace is more a question of cultivating perspective, meaning, and wisdom even as life touches you with its pain.

Life wastes nothing. Over and over again every molecule that has ever been is gathered up by the hand of life to be reshaped into yet another form.p 259

We burn out not because we don't care but because we don't grieve. We burn out because we have allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.

When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do.