Sy Safransky

February 2014

So I can’t say I was surprised when I got pulled over yesterday for doing forty-seven miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone. The policeman let me off with a warning, which was more mercy than I deserved. What do I think I’m doing, rushing through these precious, unrepeatable days?

December 2013

The woman in my dream was tall, very tall, and young, very young, and happy, very happy. But what’s the difference if she was nineteen or twenty-nine or thirty-nine? What’s the difference if she was six feet tall or seven feet tall or as tall as a redwood in the forest of an old man’s longing?

November 2013

I dreamt that I was eating sunshine — as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. No worry about calories.

Become A Friend Of The Sun

April 2013

Why do I imagine that the way I shape these sentences matters to anyone but me? So what if my writing is published? Hell, I’m the publisher!

March 2013

Let me start with gratitude: The world is broken in ten thousand places. Can I be thankful for the brokenness? How else can I learn to love the broken world?

February 2013

The days are getting shorter and so am I. It’s a fact. I used to be six feet tall. Last month, at my doctor’s office, the nurse checked my height and told me I was five feet ten and a half inches. I just looked at her.

January 2013

Note to self: don’t worry about your readers. Don’t worry about your reputation as a man with big ideas. You don’t feel big today.

July 2012

History laughs as the wind lifts her skirts. It’s too late for modesty now.

Conversations With A Remarkable Man

Honoring The Late James Hillman

Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help? They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world.