The vow of silence

The vow of silence, that's the mind-blower. See, talking is what I do... [i] t's a real need with me, a craving, I'm like a word junkie. I never shut up. I talk to myself, I talk in my sleep. The idea of voluntarily turning off that tap, I can't imagine it! It'd be like, I don't know, all the rivers in the world just slammed to a stop. No churning, no flowing, no white water, just stillness, crushing stillness. I don't think I could stand it, locked up like that in my own psyche. I'd collapse into myself, I'd implode!

~Northern Exposure

You think Nature is some Disney movie?

You think Nature is some Disney movie? Nature is a killer. Nature is a bitch. It's feeding time out there 24 hours a day, every step that you take is a gamble with death. If it isn't getting hit with lightning today, it's an earthquake tomorrow or some deer tick carrying Lime disease. Either way, you're ending up on the wrong end of the food chain.

~Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure

In Kyudo philosophy

In Kyudo philosophy, you don't aim--you become one with the target. Then, in fact, there's nothing to aim at. I find it works well with women, too. Give it a try.

~Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman, Northern Exposure

Is love supposed

Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?

~Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure

Marriage is

Marriage is the union of disparate elements. Male and female. Yin and yang. Proton and electron. What are we talking about here? Nothing less than the very tension that binds the universe. You see, when we look at marriage, people, we're are looking at creation itself.

"I am the sky," says the Hindu bridegroom to the bride. "You are the earth. We are sky and earth united.... You are my husband. You are my wife. My feet shall run because of you. My feet shall dance because of you. My heart shall beat because of you. My eyes see because of you. My mind thinks because of you and I shall love because of you."

~Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure

Sometimes love will pick you up by the short hairs...and jerk the heck out of you.

~Denise Dobbs, Northern Exposure

Marriage

Marriage. Why do we do it? Everybody knows the stats. One in two marriages end up in broken dishes and a trip to Tijuana. Is it loneliness? Partly. Is it teamwork? Definitely. Things just kind of go easier when there's two of you. One of you can wait in line at the movie theater while the other guy parks the car. Get better seats that way. Better room rate when it's a double. Are you ready to file jointly?...Above you is the sun and sky. Below you, the ground. Like the sun, your love should be constant, like the ground, solid.

~Jed Seidel, Northern Exposure,

I've been thinking

I've been thinking about that old Zen conundrum: what's the sound of one hand clapping? My personal opinion--nothing. You don't have two hands, you don't have any clapping. It's as simple as that. Stars, galaxies, clapping hands, what's the point? The point is that we all need somebody, whether you're a supercluster or a little proton, a yin or a yang. Everybody is hooked into everybody else.

~Geoffrey Neighor, Northern Exposure, Duets, 1993

Sometimes the mind

Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk.

~Northern Exposure, Three Doctors, 1993

Life's dirty

Life's dirty. Life's unclean you know. It's birth, it's sex, it's the intestinal tract. One big squishy, unsanitary mess. It never gets any cleaner either. You know, dust to dust, worms crawl in, worms crawl out, right? Even though we know that, we still walk the walk, we still live the life. We're like a bunch of little kids. Little kids, you know, we jump in this big old pond of mud and we're slapping it all over our face, rubbing our hair all down our backs and we're making these glorious, gooey, mud pies. That's us.

~Northern Exposure, Mite Makes Right, 1994

There's a dark side

There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vader in all of us. Thing is, this ain't no either-or proposition. We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience? Face the darkness. Stare it down. Own it. As brother Nietzsche said, being human is a complicated gig. So give that ol' dark night of the soul a hug. Howl the eternal yes!

~Northern Exposure, Chris Stevens