Quotes by American Authors - Page 3127

Unless you call attentionto your presencewho will know you're there?Even a countryhas to weave and wave a flagas proof of its existence.
Rod McKuen
Open the fridge and putMy heart on a plate.I'm just as you leftme, and I taste even betterleftover.
Cecily von Ziegesar
Little world, full of little peopleshouting for recognition, screaming for love, Rolling world, teeming with millions,carousel of the hungry,Is there food enough? Wheat and corn will not do.The fat are the hungriest of all, the skinny the most silent.
James Kavanaugh
Her close friends have gathered.Lord, ain't it a shameGrieving togetherSharing the blame.But when she was dyingLord, we let her down.There's no use cryin'It can't help her now.The party's all overDrink up and go home.It's too late to love herAnd leave her alone.Just say she was someoneLord, so far from homeWhose life was so lonesomeShe died all aloneWho dreamed pretty dreamsThat never came trueLord, why was she bornSo black and blue?Oh, why was she bornSo black and blue?Epitaph (Black And Blue) Written by: Kris KristoffersonNote: "Epitaph" is about Janis Joplin.
Kris Kristofferson
a woman will tell youevery home she has ever inhabitedhas been broken intostarting with her body
Suheir Hammad
Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o'er life's solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oh I know it's cliché but yeah they say that great men make it in-To places few others who even do take the risk've ever been
Criss Jami
I have no words — alas! — to tellThe loveliness of loving well!
Edgar Allan Poe
Twas noontide of summer,And mid-time of night;And stars, in their orbits,Shone pale, thro' the lightOf the brighter, cold moon,'Mid planets her slaves,Herself in the Heavens,Her beam on the waves.I gazed awhileOn her cold smile;Too cold–too cold for me-There pass'd, as a shroud,A fleecy cloud,And I turned away to thee,Proud Evening Star,In thy glory afar,And dearer thy beam shall be;For joy to my heartIs the proud partThou bearest in Heaven at night,And more I admireThy distant fire,Than that colder, lowly light.
Edgar Allan Poe
When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first,But a patriot climbedWith a thought in mind:‘Never your duty shirk.’Up the iron ladyHe stealthily made his way,Hanging the bright tricolour,He heroically saved the day.Then, for some strange reason,A mystery to this day,Hitler never climbed the tower,On the ground he had to stay.At last he ordered she be razedDown to a twisted pile.A futile attack, for still she standsBeaming her metallic smile.
E.A. Bucchianeri
Sully suffers from a stutter,simple syllables will clutter,stalling speeches up on beacheslike a sunken sailboat rudder.Sully strains to say his phrases,sickened by the sounds he raises,strings of thoughts come out in knots,he solves his sentences like mazes.At night, he writes his thoughts insteadand sighs as they steadily rush from his head.
Bo Burnham
There's in my mind a...turbulent moon-ridden girlor old woman, or both,dressed in opals and rags, feathersand torn taffeta,who knows strange songsbut she is not kind.
Denise Levertov
Love is the only bow on Life’s dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher.It is the air and light of every heart – builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody – for music is the voice of love.Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
Robert G. Ingersoll
No one here likes a wet dog.
Billy Collins
Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fire of a great mystery.I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.
Mary Oliver
This, this indeed is to be accursed, For if we mortals love, or if we sing, We count our joys not by what we have, But by what kept us from that perfect thing.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.
Ted Kooser
I offer you what I have myPoverty
W.S. Merwin
Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!" What does one do with all this crap?
Jack Spicer
People with yuan fen are destined to like one another;Friendship develops even if a thousand miles apart.But should yuan fen be absent between two individuals,They will remain strangers despite sitting face-to-face
Adeline Yen Mah
Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.
Robert Bly
I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.
Francesca Lia Block
hate blows a bubble of despair intohugeness world system universe and bang-fear buries a tomorrow under woeand up comes yesterday most green and young
E.E. Cummings
The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia.And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.
Ezra Pound
Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.
T.S Eliot
Women Are Not RosesWomen have no beginningonly continualflows.Though rivers flowwomen are notrivers.Women are notrosesthey are not oceansor stars.i would like to tellher this buti think shealready knows.
Ana Castillo
Otter! Otter! Otter!Don’t lead cows to slaughter!I love you, and I knowI should’ve told you soon-aBut you didn’t buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
T.J. Klune
In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.
Aberjhani
here’s a toast to Alan Turingborn in harsher, darker timeswho thought outside the containerand loved outside the linesand so the code-breaker was brokenand we’re sorryyes now the s-word has been spokenthe official conscience woken– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –and the story does suggesta part 2 to the Turing Test:1. can machines behave like humans?2. can we?
Matt Harvey
I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.
Charles Bukowski
look, you know i don't wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn't make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious/...
Bob Dylan
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Sylvia Plath
How weightlesswords are when nothing will do.
Philip Levine
Clear, unscalable, aheadRise the Mountains of Instead,From whose cold, cascading streamsNone may drink except in dreams.
W.H. Auden
All the rest is silenceOn the other side of the wall;And the silence ripeness,And the ripeness all.
W.H. Auden
Look deeper through the telescopeand do not be afraid when the starscollide towards the darkness,because sometimes the most beautifulthings begin in chaos.
Robert M. Drake
The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities... If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.
Rachel Carson
In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.
Mark Strand
High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air....Up, up the long, delirious, burning blueI’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.Where never lark, or even eagle flew —And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
Walt Whitman
Air goes in and outof my nose, throat, lungs, blood, heartbrain - and so I am
Matthew Quick
I wouldn’t want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days!
Frank O'Hara
Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,the dreamed as well as the lived—what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?
Louise Glück
Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.
Wallace Stevens
You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.
Nicholson Baker
When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyleatop some crumbling building,spring to lifea resuscitated angel.
Saul Williams
Stain BoyOf all the super heroes,the strangest one by far,doesn't have a special power,or drive a fancy car.next to Superman and batman, I guess he must seem tame.But to me he is quite special,and Stain Boy is his name.He can't fly around tall buildings,or outrun a speeding train,the only talent he seems to haveis to leave a nasty stain.Sometimes I know it bothers him,that he can't run or swim or fly,and because of this one ability,his dry cleaning bill is sky-high.
Tim Burton
loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shapeof a helicopter the same size as the helicopterand that's it's only skilland it isn't good enoughbut it's still amazing.
Tao Lin
The poem must resist the intelligenceAlmost successfully.
Wallace Stevens
Poetry makes nothing happen.
W.H. Auden
I held a jewel in my fingerstAnd went to sleep.tThe day was warm, and winds were prosy;tI said: "'T will keep."I woke and chid my honest fingers,—The gem was gone;tAnd now an amethyst remembrancetIs all I own.
Emily Dickinson
Think of what starlight And lamplight would lack Diamonds and fireflies If they couldn’t lean against Black. . . .
Mary O'Neill
At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.
Seth Godin
A door jumpsout from shadows,then jumps away. Thisis what I've come to find:the back door, unlatched.Tooled by insular wind, itslams and slamswithout meaningto and without meaning.
Li-Young Lee
I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.
Billy Collins
Ye are better than all the balladsThat ever were sung or said;For ye are living poems,And all the rest are dead.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
W.H. Auden
Darling, do you rememberthe man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz
Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond—surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjectsto which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.
Louise Glück