… Later I’m back in New York sitting around with Irwin and Simon and Raphael and Lazarus, and now we’re famous writers more or less, but they wonder why I’m so sunk now, so unexcited as we sit among all our published books and poems, tho at least, since I live with Memère in a house of her own miles from the city, it’s a peaceful sorrow. A peaceful sorrow at home is the best I’ll ever be able to offer the world, in the end, and so I told my Desolation Angels goodbye. A new life for me.
–Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels
You will have to go on discriminating and make a sustained effort to convince your mind of the fact that japa, meditation, and all other spiritual exercises, have for purpose your awakening. On this pilgrimage one must never slacken: effort is what counts.
—Sri Anandamayi Ma, in Joseph Fitzgerald, The Essential Sri Anandamayi Ma: Life and Teachings of a 20th Century Indian Saint
