Quotes by American Authors - Page 3133

Humanity i love you because youare perpetually putting the secret oflife in your pants and forgettingit's there and sitting downon itand because you areforever making poems in the lapof death Humanityi hate you
E.E. Cummings
You see how I tryTo reach with wordsWhat matters mostAnd how I fail.
Czesław Miłosz
It is at the edge of the petal that love waits
William Carlos Williams
Your thighs are appletrees. Your knees are a southern breeze.
William Carlos Williams
Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,Sooner than I will live with you.Fish will come walking out of the sea,Sooner than you will come back to me.
Peter S Beagle
My world was the size of a crayon box, and it took every colour to draw her
Sarah Kay
I know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
You lethargic, waiting upon me,waiting for the fire and Iattendant upon you, shaken by your beautyShaken by your beauty Shaken.
William Carlos Williams
creativity keeps the world alive, yet, everyday we are asked to be ashamed of honoring it, wanting to live our lives as artists. i’ve carried the shame of being a ‘creative’ since i came to the planet; have been asked to be something different, more, less my whole life. thank spirit, my wisdom is deeper than my shame, and i listened to who i was. i want to say to all the creatives who have been taught to believe who you are is not enough for this world, taught that a life of art will amount to nothing, know that who we are, and what we do is life. when we create, we are creating the world. remember this, and commit.
Nayyirah Waheed
I act as the tongue of you,... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.
Walt Whitman
But my heart is an old house(the kind my mothergrew up in)hell to heat and cooland faulty in the wiringand though it’s nice to look atI have no businessinviting lovers in.
Clementine von Radics
See with your soul and not your eyesbecause to dance with the beasts youmust penetrate their disguise.
P.C. Cast
I am God, la de dah.
Anne Sexton
And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.
Nicholas Sparks
Is it the sea you hear in me,Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?
Sylvia Plath
I'll Die For Your Sins If You Live For mine.
Jim Carroll
They say that I am a poetI wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottleemotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle ondistant shores I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and forthat matter as to whether I ever get my point acrossor my love
Saul Williams
Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman-But who is that on the other side of you?
T.S Eliot
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)
Mary Oliver
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.
Jack Kerouac
We pull our boots on with both handsbut we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorryabout the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
Richard Siken
I am not yours, not lost in you,Not lost, although I long to beLost as a candle lit at noon,Lost as a snowflake in the sea.You love me, and I find you stillA spirit beautiful and bright,Yet I am I, who long to beLost as a light is lost in light.
Sara Teasdale
Truths are written, never said... Lines are drawn, but then they fade.
Colleen Hoover
I've triedto become someone else for a while,only to discover that he, too, was me.
Stephen Dunn
Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow-You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,? that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allan Poe
Safety isn't always safe. You can find one on every gun.
Andrea Gibson
Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left,You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
Walt Whitman
Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I never meet you In this lifeLet me feel the lackA glance from your eyesThen my life Will be yours
James Jones
If you come as softlyAs wind within the treesYou may hear what I hearSee what sorrow sees.If you come as lightlyAs threading dewI will take you gladlyNor ask more of you.You may sit beside meSilent as a breathOnly those who stay deadShall remember death.And if you come I will be silentNor speak harsh words to you.I will not ask you why, now.Or how, or what you do.We shall sit here, softlyBeneath two different yearsAnd the rich earth between usShall drink our tears.
Audre Lorde
[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
Adrienne Rich
never trust anyone who says they do not see color. this means to them,you are invisible.
Nayyirah Waheed
the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own
Mary Oliver
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!
Allen Ginsberg
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
Criss Jami
I. Those of us born by water are never afraid enough of drowning. Bruises used to trophy my knees from my death-defying tree climb jumps. Growing up, my backyard was a forest of blackberry bushes. I learned early nothing sweet will come to you unthorned. II. At twelve your body becomes a currency. So Jenny and I sat down and cut up all our clothes into nothing. That year I failed math class but knew the exact number of calories in a carrot stick. I learned early being desired goes hand in hand with hunger.III. The last time I tried to scream I felt my father climbing up through my throat and into my mouth.IV. There is a certain kind of girl who reads Lolita at fourteen and finds religion. I painted my eyes black and sucked barroom cherries to red my tongue. There was a boy who promised Judas really did love Jesus. I learned early every kiss and betrayal are up for interpretation.V. I think he must have conferenced with my nightmares on exactly how to hurt me.VI. He never broke my heart. He only turned it into a compass that always points me back to him.
Clementine von Radics
And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while,After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor - And this, and so much more? -
T.S Eliot
To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest.
Flora Jessop
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Walt Whitman
Women who focus on style over substance usually find themselves in a big fucking hole, with other men who want to fuck the hole. Oh so smooth, and none sophistacted. Because, you know, how sophisticated can hole-fucking really be
Emilie Autumn
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I never dreamed the sea so deep,The earth so dark; so long my sleep,I have become another child.I wake to see the world go wild.
Allen Ginsberg
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A wounded dear leaps the highest
Emily Dickinson
The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person,for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
Czesław Miłosz
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
Audre Lorde
My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.
Frank O'Hara
You will recognize your own path when you come upon it because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.
Sara Teasdale
INTO MY OWNOne of my wishes is that those dark trees,tSo old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,tWere not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,tBut stretched away unto the edge of doom.tI should not be withheld but that some dayt Into their vastness I should steal away,tFearless of ever finding open land,tOr highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.tI do not see why I should e’er turn back,tOr those should not set forth upon my trackt To overtake me, who should miss me heretAnd long to know if still I held them dear.tThey would not find me changed from him they knew—tOnly more sure of all I thought was true.
Robert Frost
Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.
Maya Angelou
I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Sylvia Plath
SEPTEMBER 1, 1939I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of deathOffends the September night.Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge imago madeA psychopathic god:I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.Exiled Thucydides knewAll that a speech can sayAbout Democracy,And what dictators do,The elderly rubbish they talkTo an apathetic grave;Analysed all in his book,The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief:We must suffer them all again.Into this neutral airWhere blind skyscrapers useTheir full height to proclaimThe strength of Collective Man,Each language pours its vainCompetitive excuse:But who can live for longIn an euphoric dream;Out of the mirror they stare,Imperialism's faceAnd the international wrong.Faces along the barCling to their average day:The lights must never go out,The music must always play,All the conventions conspireTo make this fort assumeThe furniture of home;Lest we should see where we are,Lost in a haunted wood,Children afraid of the nightWho have never been happy or good.The windiest militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wroteAbout DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have,Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.From the conservative darkInto the ethical lifeThe dense commuters come,Repeating their morning vow;'I will be true to the wife,I'll concentrate more on my work,'And helpless governors wakeTo resume their compulsory game:Who can release them now,Who can reach the dead,Who can speak for the dumb?All I have is a voiceTo undo the folded lie,The romantic lie in the brainOf the sensual man-in-the-streetAnd the lie of AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky:There is no such thing as the StateAnd no one exists alone;Hunger allows no choiceTo the citizen or the police;We must love one another or die.Defenseless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet, dotted everywhere,Ironic points of lightFlash out wherever the JustExchange their messages:May I, composed like themOf Eros and of dust,Beleaguered by the sameNegation and despair,Show an affirming flame.
W.H. Auden
Fuck You Poem #45Fuck you in slang and conventional English.Fuck you in lost and neglected lingoes.Fuck you hungry and sated; faded, pock marked, and defaced.Fuck you with orange rind, fennel and anchovy paste.Fuck you with rosemary and thyme, and fried green olives on the side.Fuck you humidly and icily.Fuck you farsightedly and blindly.Fuck you nude and draped in stolen finery.Fuck you while cells divide wildly and birds trill.Thank you for barring me from his bedside while he was ill.Fuck you puce and chartreuse.Fuck you postmodern and prehistoric.Fuck you under the influence of opiun, codeine, laudanum, and paregoric.Fuck every real and imagined country you fancied yourself princess of.Fuck you on feast days and fast days, below and above.Fuck you sleepless and shaking for nineteen nights running.Fuck you ugly and fuck you stunning.Fuck you shipwrecked on the barren island of your bed.Fuck you marching in lockstep in the ranks of the dead.Fuck you at low and high tide.And fuck you astride anyone who has the bad luck to fuck you, in dank hallways, bathrooms, or kitchens.Fuck you in gasps and whispered benedictions.And fuck these curses, however heartfelt and true,that bind me, till I forgive you, to you.
Amy Gerstler
If I had a soul I sold itfor pretty wordsIf I had a body I usedit up spurting my essenceAllen Ginsberg warns youdont follow my pathto extinction
Allen Ginsberg
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and handand asshole holy!Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere isholy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's anangel!The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman isholy as you my soul are holy!The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice isholy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holyKerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-sady holy the unknown buggered and sufferingbeggars holy the hideous human angels!Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocksof the grandfathers of Kansas!Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bopapocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuanahipsters peace & junk & drums!Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holythe cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy themysterious rivers of tears under the streets!Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of themiddle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy MoscowHoly Istanbul!Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy theclocks in space holy the fourth dimension holythe fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy thelocomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy theabyss!Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!bodies! suffering! magnanimity!Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligentkindness of the soul!
Allen Ginsberg
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Edgar Allan Poe
I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, Eyes;I wonder if It weighs like Mine,Or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long,Or did it just begin?I could not tell the Date of Mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live,And if They have to try,And whether, could They choose between, It would not be, to die. I note that Some -- gone patient long --At length, renew their smile.An imitation of a LightThat has so little Oil. I wonder if when Years have piled,Some Thousands -- on the Harm Of early hurt -- if such a lapseCould give them any Balm; Or would they go on aching stillThrough Centuries above,Enlightened to a larger PainBy Contrast with the Love. The Grieved are many, I am told;The reason deeper lies, --Death is but oneand comes but once,And only nails the eyes. There's Grief of Want and Grief of Cold, --A sort they call "Despair";There's Banishment from native Eyes,In sight of Native Air. And though I may not guess the kindCorrectly, yet to meA piercing Comfort it affordsIn passing Calvary, To note the fashions of the Cross,And how they're mostly worn,Still fascinated to presumeThat Some are like My Own.
Emily Dickinson
Some days I wake upand all I feelare the fracturesin the flesh that coversthe only meI've ever known.Some days,it's those exact fissuresthat let the lighthiding inside mepour outand coverin goldeveryonethat found enough beautyin the cracksto standclose.
Tyler Knott Gregson
We would rather be ruined than changedWe would rather die in our dreadThan climb the cross of the momentAnd let our illusions die.
W.H. Auden