Clarissa Pinkola Estes Quotes

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

That is what the intuition is for: it is the direct messenger of the soul.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Asking the proper questions is the central action of transformation. Questions are the key that causes the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

No Latina woman would be called 'Ms.' - that's an invention of middle-class Anglo women. Latina women are proud to be called 'Mrs.' That simply means that we have a family.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

If women were in charge of everything, there would be women tyrants. If black people were in charge, there would be black tyrants. If Hispanics were in charge, then Hispanic tyrants.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Our own sorrows seem heavy enough, even when lifted by certain long-term joys. But watching others hurt is the breaker of most any heart.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

People used to grow up in small communities where folk wisdom was passed down. But we don't live there anymore. We can't go next door to your aunt and ask her for the answers.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Some say that sudden knowledge of mystical matters is accomplished only in complete quietude, or that Creator, in one of God's many forms, appears only in orderly ways that are beauteous and picturesque, or that the mystical appears only in completely silent ways. All are true. Except for the 'only' part.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I was twice-born. I'm Mexican by nature and Hungarian by nurture.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Forget: Refuse to dwell; let go and loosen one's hold, particularly on memory. To forget is an active - not passive - endeavor.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Forgive: Make a conscious decision to cease to harbor resentment, which includes forgiving a debt and giving up one's resolve to retaliate.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I know people heal by being able to tell the story - the whole story.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When you feel bad, find a person to talk to and cry with, to tell of your anger and other helpless feelings.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Modern storytellers are the descendants of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, griots, cantadoras, cantors, traveling poets, bums, hags, and crazy people.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Cynicism means the conduit to the soul has a great kink in it, like a garden hose in which nothing flows in either direction.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Than Shwe ordered the confiscation of all cell phones and laptops and computers so no reportage could come out of Burma. It seemed clear that a demon, something diabolical, rather than something compassionate and human was in charge of Burma.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In our time, there are still many, like those in the Good Samaritan story, who being of the religious classes in that time, purposely crossed to the other side of the road, and passed by the injured and bleeding.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I became married at a young age and had two daughters and divorced at 26. I had to go on welfare to make ends meet. I had no way to support myself.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Many people have trouble with forgiveness because they have been taught it is a singular act to be completed in one sitting. That is not so. Forgiveness has many layers, many seasons.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We all wait for a mirror to show us who we are, to validate us. When we hear something about ourselves that we have never heard before, it feels like a blessing, and it gives power.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The drive toward Life is protective, thoughtful, vulnerable, and invested in immaculate love. It is this last that marks the difference between a wise heart muddy with real life experiences in the trenches and a dry heart that functions on rote concepts alone.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I am built close to the ground and of extravagant body.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it all.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We all wish to be brave and strong in the face of disaster. We all wish to be looked up to for our endurance and efforts to help others.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Any time I find medicine that's helpful, I share it with everyone I know.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

To Than Shwe, a kingdom in return for the eternal soul is just the right egregious trade-off. Than Shwe is a general who carries the light of unbounded ambition.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

To reasoned people, almost everything is understandable, but evil is forever incomprehensible.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

You know the best thing about having a house? You get to plant whatever you want in the yard and watch it grow.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

You must become an activist if you are going to live the natural life.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says nothing good comes of this is not yet listening.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The soul has no gender.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes