#poe

…(my father) would say nothing, And I could not find a silence Among the one hundred Chinese silences That would fit the one he created Even though I was the one Who had just made up the business Of the one hundred Chinese silences- The Silence of the Night Boat. And the Silence of the Lotus, Cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell Only deeper and softer… ↗

— Billy Collins

#loss #poetry #spirit #spirituality #business

...How terrible, those dreams before sleep were—the worse kind, mixing hope with despair... ↗

— John Geddes

#dreams #hope #poetry-quotes #sleep #terrible

Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr. ↗

— Philip Larkin

#skill #business

Some have won a wild delight, By daring wilder sorrow; Could I gain thy love to-night, I'd hazard death to-morrow. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#daring #love #poetry #risk #death

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#death #poetry #death

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. ↗

— T. S. Eliot

#before #communicate #genuine #understood

Every time your work is read, you die several deaths for every word, and poetry is like being flayed alive. ↗

— Mary Stewart

#writing #death

Conflicting stories continue to circulate concerning the death of the President. A second White House announcement has now called attention to the President's schedule for the day, pointing out that no mention is made there of dying. Also released was the President's schedule for tomorrow, wherein there also appears to be no plan on the part of the President or his advisers for him to die. "I think it would be best," said the White House Bilge Secretary, "in the light of these schcedules, to wait for a statement, one way or another, from the President himself. ↗

— Philip Roth

#poetry #death

One thing all the stories agreed on: King Robert was dead. The bells in the seven towers of the Great Sept of Baelor had tolled for a day and a night, the thunder of their grief rolling across the city in a bronze tide. They only rang the bells like that for the death of a king, a tanner's boy told Arya. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#death

Our Mother feedeth thus our little life, That we may in turn feed her with our death ↗

— James Thomson

#mother-nature #poetry #death