Top 70 Aspen Matis Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Smiling at an echo of his voice on my mind’s stage, I felt the void of all I hadn’t said.”

— Aspen Matis

2. “Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity – a sacred thing.”

— Aspen Matis

3. “That evening after dinner, I picked lemons from the tree in the backyard, the fruits golden bulbs under the rising moon.”

— Aspen Matis

4. “The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard.”

— Aspen Matis

5. “Seamless like a fall leaf changing color, my will switched powerfully.”

— Aspen Matis

6. “Walking back home that afternoon, I felt more aware of the poverty and opulence on every sidewalk – we brushed past a raven-haired lady with a thousand-dollar handbag and a skinny child with toeless shoes begging for change.”

— Aspen Matis

7. “Childhood is a wilderness.”

— Aspen Matis

8. “Because in the wake of devastation, growth becomes the only survival option. In.”

— Aspen Matis

9. “Day vivified the city, and we found a rogue path through the dunes down to the beach, the foam edge of teal sea. The whole sky celestial sapphire.”

— Aspen Matis

10. “When we apply the lessons we’ve struggled for our whole lives to learn to the lives of people we love, our love becomes judgment – which is toxic. Our fear our daughters will fail leads us to fail them.”

— Aspen Matis

11. “The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry.”

— Aspen Matis

12. “I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In morning’s somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now it seemed the opposite: a wild act that would define me.”

— Aspen Matis

13. “But in creative fields, a degree is a prerequisite for nothing.”

— Aspen Matis

14. “The only comfort I found was in planning to disappear.”

— Aspen Matis

15. “Bright yellow lemons twinkled in the twilight sun on a terrace tree, and far beyond my window, San Francisco lay, flat like a pastel toy.”

— Aspen Matis

16. “I walked, floated, lighter – forty miles, my biggest day yet. I’d lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self – forgiveness for my innocence.”

— Aspen Matis

17. “I wanted to come close to fierce wild things. They seemed prehistoric, rare and sacred.”

— Aspen Matis

18. “Spirit dancing, I envisioned a place inside this energetic city, ours: a classic townhouse on a steep street with expansive views of the Pacific, the magenta siding sun-faded – a third-story perch, thick platinum haze embracing our new home.”

— Aspen Matis

19. “Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation.”

— Aspen Matis

20. “It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.”

— Aspen Matis

21. “Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.”

— Aspen Matis

22. “Thus we joined spirit with Joan Didion and Patti Smith and about a million other dreamers who, against all odds, had landed here, moving on fumes of reveries, to New York City.”

— Aspen Matis

23. “When tomorrow broke, our hillside home filled up with honeyed light, a fish tank.”

— Aspen Matis

24. “I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him.”

— Aspen Matis

25. “I needed only to allow myself to know what I already knew.”

— Aspen Matis

26. “We walked back to his revived house in tender silence, the dry gold land freckled with young pines and red flowers.”

— Aspen Matis

27. “On this walk I’d had so much time and space to actually figure out who I was without my mother’s influence. I understood now: the things that my mother had found made her happy were not the same as the things that made me happy. And I understood: that was okay.”

— Aspen Matis

28. “I saw for the first time that I could stop giving people the power to make me feel disrespected. In my anger I began to see the absurdity of allowing this boy to shame me.”

— Aspen Matis

29. “In the small hours of a cold February dawn, Justin and I walked to the Pacific, high cliffs eroding over the ocean, crashed and crashed by lapping salty waves. Their spray misted us in day’s young purple air, exhilarating. Walking the Golden Gate Bridge, our world receding, pale gold sunrise lit thin fog, morning coloring us like a faded fairy tale.”

— Aspen Matis

30. “And if I’d be left alone in the woods again, I smiled to think how I’d find new gifts and thrive. At the end of a long trail and the beginning of the rest of my life, I was committed to always loving myself. I would put myself in that win-win situation.”

— Aspen Matis

31. “The entire time, he’d only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn’t the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn’t have heard me. He’d never responded, not by stopping, not with his words.”

— Aspen Matis

32. “I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek.”

— Aspen Matis

33. “I could not deny that in this attractive city, without compelling assignments or any deadlines to reach for, all painful catalysts for growth had been eliminated, erased from my existence like the rogue lines in a sketch – the unexpected marks that make the picture’s expression passionate and real, gone now. Living here, I was growing complacent again, seduced by a stagnant state of mind I hated to indulge –.”

— Aspen Matis

34. “Under gold clouds, he pushed the limits of my body, setting a faster pace – some days surpassing forty rugged miles, unstopping through morning’s thick peach haze; noon’s warmth; red evening sun.”

— Aspen Matis

35. “The first time I walked alone, thirteen, I was terrified. A twig snapped under my shoe; my heart revved wildly. I’d walked these sidewalks a thousand times with my mom, yet I was scared by all her fears. Don’t talk to strangers, walk quickly past parked cars, look both ways, all ways, always. Be alert. There was so damn much to remember to stay safe.”

— Aspen Matis

36. “In the aftermath of destruction, a silence settles – the stillness of fresh loss. People’s cheerful chatter is fainter, the blue color of sky dimmer; now that horror is undeniable and feels inescapable, the value of life seems lessened.”

— Aspen Matis

37. “Because – as I’d discovered – loneliness is not a function of company, but rather it is a consequence: an unpleasant symptom of a needy state of mind that desperately seeks to extract happiness from a source outside itself.”

— Aspen Matis

38. “Beneath hot sun, desert roses bloomed. Under cold moon, I still refused to.”

— Aspen Matis

39. “I was able to pitch a tent and carry a backpack twenty-five miles a day through mountains – I’d mastered a thousand amazing physical feats – physically I’d become undeniably confident and capable – but physical weakness had never been the problem that I had. My true problem had been passivity, the lifelong-conditioned submission that became my nature.”

— Aspen Matis

40. “College had always felt more like an anchor than a kite, a tedious and time-eating entrapment. Studying for pointless tests stole away nights, rote memorization disappearing the freedom of creation.”

— Aspen Matis

41. “Trails enabled me to better see the world, to notice fine aspects invisible from an airplane, the most basic things we miss. Seeing life at a pace at which you can actually observe nuance, the speed of stepping, the beautiful inspiring texture of “plain” reality becomes visible – God smiling in the detail.”

— Aspen Matis

42. “My body was smarter than I was. I was with someone who would never hurt me, and so I finally relaxed.”

— Aspen Matis

43. “I flushed – this time not in shame – but in rage.”

— Aspen Matis

44. “My mother overstated the dangers of the world – invented threats. And so I saw: Starbursts’ hoof-made gelatin never gave me mad cow. Mad cow was not a threat to me. And so I thought: most risks weren’t truly real.”

— Aspen Matis

45. “I didn’t know if I was brave or reckless.”

— Aspen Matis

46. “Vividly seeing that love had always been my mother’s guide, I could finally release my anger – let go of it there in the woods – and move past it.”

— Aspen Matis

47. “Maybe I’d die. Maybe I’d burn to ash in wind, or blacken like the pines. Charred skeletons, I’d add one to the count. I didn’t feel scared. I didn’t think to panic. The trail wasn’t burning. I was raw, ripe for loving. I wasn’t stopping.”

— Aspen Matis

48. “Then she told me, “You have changed my son.” Her candid tone was blunt, and I loved her directness, unapologetic as the weather.”

— Aspen Matis

49. “I was beginning to feel compassion for myself.”

— Aspen Matis

50. “We aren’t afraid of what we can explain.”

— Aspen Matis