Quotes: Claire McMillan

"I've been thinking about ritual," I said, handing her a book by Gurdjeff, who we'd recently discovered was a shared favourite. "That's all any ritual or ceremony is trying to do, to make manifest in the material world an intangible shift in spirit. So I've been thinking that anything can become ritual, painting, or writing, or cooking or making a bed. All of it transforms, makes clean. Making dinner, alchemizes disparate things into a whole. I feel like I am always transmuting things. Always changing them. All day long."

–– Claire McMillan, American author 

Source: Claire McMillan. Alchemy of a Blackbird. Toronto: Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), 2023; p. 165. 

via: Commonplace Book 2024, 2025, p. 35. 

Quotes: Claire McMillan

"Despite her exhaustion, Remedios felt the energy of novelty. The trees were different here, the streets, the smells; it enlivened her. She'd been forced into change for so long now that it felt comforting, even as she landed in a new country with nothing but a suitcase."

–– Claire McMillan, American author 

Source: Claire McMillan. Alchemy of a Blackbird. Toronto: Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), 2023; p. 132. 

via: Commonplace Book 2024, 2025, p. 35. 

Quotes: Claire McMillan

"Dailyness is the most important thing. Creating that time every day for the muse to come through." 

–– Claire McMillan, American author 

Source: Claire McMillan. Alchemy of a Blackbird. Toronto: Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), 2023; p. 3-4. 

via: Commonplace Book 2024, 2025, p. 34.