books — tenderdeeds

from the reading list

Now reading...

Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever
"So even on days when I think I’m not feeling so great and don’t feel like running, I tell myself, “No matter what, this is something I have to do in my life,” and I go out and run without really ascribing a logical reason for it. That sentence has become a kind of mantra for me: No matter what, this is something I have to do in my life... What I mean is, for me, and for the things I’m trying to accomplish in life, I’ve always had the sort of natural recognition inside that in some form or another it’s a necessary act."

Novelist As A Vocation by Haruki Murakami
"덮어놓고 외면하는 것이 아니라, 다 써버릴 때 괴로운 마음은 끝이 난다."

하지 않는 삶 by 히조
"일은 예민하게 잘하지만 예민한 사람으로 보이지 않은 것, 말 걸기 어려운 가시 돋친 사람이 아니라 생각이 기대되는 날카로운 사람이 되는 것."

기록의 쓸모 by 이승희
"내가 인생을 살면서 수 없이 경험한 고통과 좌절은 마치 오셀로 게임에서 검은색 돌이 단번에 흰색으로 뒤집히듯이 나중에는 전부 성공의 토대가 되었다. 그러니 자신이 처한 환경을 있는 그대로 받아들이고, 절대로 주저앉지 마라... ...내 일에 애정을 쏟지 않는다면 그것은 내 일을 하는게 아니라, 남의 일을 대신해주는 거다... ...오늘 하루를 '살아가는 단위'로 정하고, 그 하루하루를 온 힘을 다해 살아가며 열심히 하자... ... 순수하고 아름다운 마음을 간절히 품고, 누구에게도 뒤지지 않은 노력을 지속한다면 아무리 어려운 목표도 반드시 실현할 수 있다.

on work as burnishing
from — 왜 일하는가 by 이나모리 가즈오
"I want to love and be loved. Without suspicion, and with ease. That’s it."

from — I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee
"We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell... The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand."

on the myopic lens of our minds
from — Educated by Tara Westover
"These random thoughts come to me as I watch their proud ponytails swinging back and forth, their aggressive strides. Keeping to my own leisurely pace, I continue my run down along the Charles. These girls have their own pace, their own sense of time. And I have my own pace, my own sense of time. The two are completely different, but that’s the way it should be."

on time and pace
from — What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
"Your job, is to get to work, because the best way to win over a patron is to show them your potential, and the best demonstration of your ability is the work itself... That is the point - to keep making things. The success is the means, and the end is not having to quit."

on a creative’s real work
from — Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins
"머리 좋은 사람은 부지런한 사람을 따라갈 수 없고, 부지런한 사람은 꾸준한 사람을 따라갈 수 없다는 것이다. 완벽하지 않아도, 대충 하더라도 멈추지 않고 또 해보는 것이다. 꾸준하게 하는 것과 완벽하게 하는 것은 다른 일이다. 무언가를 꾸준하게 한다는 것은 실수가 잦아도, 큰 변화가 보이지 않아도, 지루하더라도 계속 다시 하는 것이다. 즉, 정확도보다는 루틴화를 더 우선순위에 둔다고 보면 된다."

on the value of repetition and consistency
from — 지금은 나만의 시간입니다 by 김유진
“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

on embracing the disorientation of youth
from — Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
"The psalmist declares, “This is the day the Lord has made.” This one. We wake not to a vague or general mercy from a far-off God. God, in delight and wisdom, has made, named, and blessed this average day. What I in my weakness see as another monotonous day in a string of days, God has given as a singular gift... The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive, and ordinary. I often want to skip the boring, daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith. But it’s in the dailiness of the Christian faith — the making the bed, the doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small — that God’s transformation takes root and grows."

on faith in the banal and mundane
from — Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren
"Here’s tomorrow morning, six o’clock. Coffee. The chair by the window, the window by the tree. Time to breathe. A psalm and story from the Gospels. Hearing the Father’s voice. Pouring out my own. Or just sitting, resting. Maybe I’ll hear a word from God that will alter my destiny, maybe I’ll just process my anger over something that’s bothering me. Maybe I’ll feel my mind settle like untouched water; maybe my mind will ricochet from thought to thought, and never come to rest. If so, that’s fine. I’ll be back, same time tomorrow. Starting my day in the quiet place."

on the importance of quiet time
from — The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer
"Self is the new god, the new spiritual authority, the new morality. But this puts a crushing weight on the self — one it was never designed to bear. It must discover itself, become itself, stay true to itself, justify itself, make itself happy, perform and defend its fragile identity. As my Peloton instructor would say, “validate your greatness.” But what about the many days when we’re not all that great?"

on our slavery to an emotional state
from — Live No Lies by John Mark Comer
"I have this phrase I use: the old woman. I say that with great fondness. My daughter and I once went on travels. On those journeys, I was searching for that old woman. The woman I wanted to grow into. She's wise. She's bold. She's strong and resilient. She knows her voice, she speaks it, and she stands by it. This is the old woman for me. She's distilled down. In my novel The Invention of Wings, there's a moment at the end where Handful looks at Sarah and says she's been boiled down into a good strong broth. I want to be that. I want to be a good strong broth that has those qualities of the old woman I went off searching for."

Sue Monk Kidd
from — The Path Made Clear by Oprah Winfrey
"Seek out the moments when you felt your heart move. When something changed forever, even if that moment seems minuscule compared to the rest of the story. That will be your five-second moment. Until you have it, you don’t have a story."

on identifying stories
from — Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
" 생각해보면 우리는 그동안 '직' 에만 너무 집착했던 것인지도 모른다.'업'은 타고는 나의 적성으로 평생 할수 있는 뜻한다. 회사에서 '디자인만 하는 사람' 이었지만 회사 밖에서는 '디자인 도 할 수 있는 사람'... 나는 더 이상 나를 명함에 적힌 회사 이름이나 직함으로 표현하고 싶지 않다. 지금의 내게 '직' 은 사라졌지만 그 대신 훨씬 더 다양한 '업'이 가득해졌다."

on the limitations of labels
from — 럭키 드로우 by 드로우앤드류