Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If we cry more tears we will ruin the land with salt; instead let's praise that which would distract us with despair. Make a song for death, a song for yellow teeth and bad breath
The woman hanging from the 13th floor window on the east side of Chicago is not alone...She is all the women of the apartment building who stand watching her, watching themselves.
You can't look for love, or it will run away from you. But, you know, don't look for it. Don't look for it. Just go where it is and appreciate it, and, you know, it will find you.
I used to stand on the corner in San Diego with poems sticking out of my hip pocket, asking people if there was a place where I could read poems. The audience is half of the poem.
All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.
No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.
The poetry is the Earth, charming; The river, flowing from lofty mountains; Nature, a young woman and a heavenly plant with blossoming flowers, slinking in the garden of the mind.
I didn't go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.
Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
I'm interested in the Gothic novel because it's very much a woman's form. Why is there such a wide readership for books that essentially say, 'Your husband is trying to kill you'?
Her voice is thin and her moan is high, And her cackling laugh or her barking cold Bring terror to the young and old. O Molly, Molly, Molly Means Lean is the ghost of Molly Means.
... the attempt to render visual intricacy makes words feel unwieldy, like sacks of meaning that must be lugged into place, dragged here and there, then still don't fell accurate.
Just opening quietly for moments everyday can create a path by which life can reach us, the way rain carves a little stream in the earth by which the smallest flowers are watered.
For listening to the stories of others ... is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name.
And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes more than anything to be unwakened by what she cannot name?
Ninety percent of what's wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath, says God from the bowels of the subway. but we want magic, to win the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it.
The world is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.
Yes, the mistrust of poetry has a long history, for a variety of reasons, but they all come down to sentiment and invention over fact and truth. Figurative language is suspicious.
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children of the light.
I think I may have to grow up without growing old. I think we're going to have to define differently what I'm going to be. We're going to have to define my growing up differently.
Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
I went out into the garden in the morning dusk, When sorrow enveloped me like a cloud; And the breeze brought to my nostril the odor of spices, As balm of healing for a sick soul.
In my own life, I believe it was an early education in poetical metaphor that helped me to grapple with and make sense of all the difficult and traumatic things that were to come.
A proud bigot, who is vain enough to think that he can deceive even God by affected zeal, and throwing the veil of holiness over vices, damns all mankind by the word of his power.
Drugs are nihilistic: they undermine all values and radically overturn all our ideas about good and evil, what is just and what is unjust, what is permitted and what is forbidden.
Language lies outside of society because it is its foundation; but it also lies within society because that is the only place where it exists and the only place where it develops.
Tis on the living Envy feeds. She silent grows When, after death, man's honor is his guard. So I, when on the pyre consumed I lie, Shall live, for all that's noblest will survive.
A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote, and the life of small-time dances and talk about football would not be for him. He might take part but could not belong.
The ground swell is what’s going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are clichés also, of course, and I’m sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.
The ground swell is what's going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are cliches also, of course, and I'm sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal. Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood by all, but which the wise, and great, and good interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme...they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way-and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.
Christina Stead has a Chinese say, "Our old age is perhaps life's decision about us" or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.
When an elder turns to face the dead, that means he turns away from facing the future and his own retirement in Phoenix, let's say. He turns and finds himself facing the children.
A lot of poems seem, in some sense, to pull the outside world into the interior. They aren't perhaps emotion recollected in tranquillity but perception recollected in interiority.
For I say this is death and the sole death,- When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest.
There is much in nature against us. But we forget: Take nature altogether since time began, Including human nature, in peace and war, And it must be a little more in favor of man.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth.
At some level, you have to be able to say, "This is my task." It's in small, local ways that you keep yourself alive and refresh ideas that are always going into dead abstraction.
In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are.
Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights,A brief wherein all marvels summèd lie,Of fairest forms and sweetest shapes the store,Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.
Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
No mirror ever became iron again; No bread ever became wheat; No ripened grape ever became sour fruit. Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse. Become the light.
Run from what's comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I'll be mad.
In past wars only homes burnt, but this time Don't be surprised if even loneliness ignites. In past wars only bodys burnt, but this time Don't be surprised if even shadows ignite.
Sweet memory, wafted by the gentle gale, Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail, To view the fairy haunts of long-lost hours, Blest with far greener shades, far fresher flowers.
I have loved this life. I smile because I have tiny dreams that play hopscotch at the corners of my mouth. And every time I breathe they float, every time I laugh, they fly kites.