Richard Siken Quotes

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  • Poet
  • born 1967
  • 68 quotes

Richard Siken, a poet (born 1967), is quoted 68 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Body, Stars, Dream and Heart.

Quotes with a ready-made image come first, then the rest in order of how often they are read and shared. Open any quote to copy it, share it, or turn it into a picture quote.

I am singing now while Rome burns.

We laugh & it pits the world against us.

Someone is digging your grave right now.

I'm bleeding, I'm not just making conversation.

Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more.

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.

When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven...

Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?

He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.

Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly flames everywhere.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.

If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.

Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero.

You play along, because you want to die for love, you always have.

Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.

From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.

Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.

I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again.

The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.

This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.

I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.

You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not           harmless. You are not                     breathing.

The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.

I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you say I'll give you anything but you never come through.

Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

Everything affects my poetry, every day something happens that changes me forever. I’m susceptible and plastic, thin-skinned and moody.

A kid under a tablecloth insists he’s a ghost. A table underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us, only pretending to be invisible.

Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?

Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.

Fairy tales have rules. You are a princess or you aren’t. You are pure at heart or you aren’t. If you are pure at heart, or lucky, you might catch a break.

Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like “I deserved a better life than this.

Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks

I don't know where I end and the world begins. My best guess? Skin. It's the only actual boundary between the body and the world, between a body and any other body.

You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.

I wouldn’t kill your pony. I’d like to believe it, anyway. I’d like to believe I wouldn’t drag you out in to the woods and leave you there, either. So far, it hasn’t come up.

I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything.

He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place – well then, game over.

You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened. Your co-workers ask if everything's okay and you tell them you're just tired. And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.

Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.

Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it.

Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much.

...you're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.

Richard Siken is quoted on

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