#try

Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not create and, if we are to believe certain facile condemnations, would not want to create. A literary critic is a reader who is necessarily severe. By turning inside out like a glove an overworked complex that has become debased to the point of being part of the vocabulary of statesmen, we might say that the literary critic and the professor of rhetoric, who know-all and judge-all, readily go in for a simplex of superiority. As for me, being an addict of felicitous reading, I only read and re-read what I like, with a bit of reader's pride mixed in with much enthusiasm. ↗

— Gaston Bachelard

#literary-criticism

This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me ↗

— Walt Whitman

#poetry #new-york-city

I smiled at him, as Doyle squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. "Some people are addicted to falling in love, Doctor. Some people love that rush of new emotions, and when that first rush of new love is spent, they move on to the next, thinking the love wasn't real. What I felt in her, and potentially in you, is the love of years. Love that knows that that first rush of freshness isn't the real thing. It's the tip of the iceberg. ↗

— Laurell K. Hamilton

#meredith-gentry #love

A lover goes toward his beloved as enthusiastically as a schoolboy leaving his books, but when he leaves his girlfriend, he feels as miserable as the schoolboy on his way to school. (Act 2, scene 2) ↗

— William Shakespeare

#poetry #love

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk. ↗

— Marina Tsvetaeva

#russian #writing-advice #writing-advice

a woman will tell you every home she has ever inhabited has been broken into starting with her body ↗

— Suheir Hammad

#home

I thought leaving you would be easy, just walking out the door but I keep getting pinned against it with my legs around your waist and it’s like my lips want you like my lungs want air, it’s just what they where born to do so I am sitting at work thinking of you cutting vegetables in my kitchen your hair in my shower drain your fingers on my spine in the morning while we listen to Muddy Waters, I know you will never be the one I call home but the way you talk about poems like marxists talk of revolution it makes me want to keep trying. I’m still looking for reasons to love you. I’m still looking for proof you love me. ↗

— Clementine von Radics

#home

Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me And tune his merry note, Unto the sweet bird's throat; Come hither, come hither, come hither. Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#as-you-like-it #nature #plays #poetry #love

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#fundamentalism #god #humor #idolatry #spirituality

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#poetry #self-discovery #wisdom #experience