#poetry

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. ↗

— Ezra Pound

#despair #difficulty #fear #optimism #poetry

grief is a house where the chairs have forgotten how to hold us the mirrors how to reflect us the walls how to contain us grief is a house that disappears each time someone knocks at the door or rings the bell a house that blows into the air at the slightest gust that buries itself deep in the ground while everyone is sleeping grief is a house where no on can protect you where the younger sister will grow older than the older one where the doors no longer let you in or out ↗

— Jandy Nelson

#grief #mourning #poetry #sorrow #sisters

Llevo un equipaje de silencio. Me he rodeado de un silencio tan hondo y duradero que nunca acierto a abrirme con las palabras. Cuando hablo, solamente me cierro de otra manera. ↗

— Herta Müller

#life

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. ↗

— Coleridge

#science

Unjustified ambition kills value, Kills someone else's desire to fly, Cuts their wings, sucks their air. If there is nothing else, it eats its own life. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#ambition #dejan-stojanovic #desire #fly #life

There is always the question why And there is always life, Which doesn't need an answer. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#answers #dejan-stojanovic #life #literature #literature-quotes

Otherwise I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise. ↗

— Jane Kenyon

#life #poetry #life

Choice, and all its attendant energy, is a characteristic of youth. It is before one chooses that one feels desire and longing without fulfillment, which gives an edge to any artistic endeavor. Galway Kinnell recently said in an interview that a young poet has so many choices but an old poet must simply endure his chosen life. ↗

— Mary Ruefle

#poetry #youth #life

Ask him why there are hypocrites in the world.' 'Because it is hard to bear the happiness of others.' 'When are we happy?' 'When we desire nothing and realize that possession is only momentary, and so are forever playing.' 'What is regret?' 'To realize that one has spent one's life worrying about the future.' 'What is sorrow?' 'To long for the past.' 'What is the highest pleasure?' 'To hear a good story. ↗

— Vikram Chandra

#hinduism #pleasure #poetry #sorrow #life

Mornings at Blackwater" For years, every morning, I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks. And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen. So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#imagination