Quotes by American Authors - Page 3135

I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.
Sylvia Plath
There are things known and there are things unknownand in between are the doors.
Jim Morrison
The Peace of Wild ThingsWhen despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
you can take this mouththis wound you wantbut you can't kissand make itbetter.
Daphne Gottlieb
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
Edgar Allan Poe
Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.
Janet Fitch
life's not a paragraphAnd death i think is no parenthesis
E.E. Cummings
may came home with a smooth round stoneas small as a world and as large as alone.
E.E. Cummings
Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.
Nicholas Sparks
I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with.Tell me why you loved them,then tell me why they loved you.Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through.Tell me what the word home means to youand tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s namejust by the way you describe your bedroomwhen you were eight.See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate,and if that day still trembles beneath your bones.Do you prefer to play in puddles of rainor bounce in the bellies of snow?And if you were to build a snowman,would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman armsor would leave your snowman armlessfor the sake of being harmless to the tree?And if you would,would you notice how that tree weeps for youbecause your snowman has no arms to hug youevery time you kiss him on the cheek?Do you kiss your friends on the cheek?Do you sleep beside them when they’re sadeven if it makes your lover mad?Do you think that anger is a sincere emotionor just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?See, I wanna know what you think of your first name,and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joywhen she spoke it for the very first time.I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind.Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years oldbeating up little boys at school.If you were walking by a chemical plantwhere smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black cloudswould you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loudor would you whisper“That cloud looks like a fish,and that cloud looks like a fairy!”Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin?Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea?And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me —how would you explain the miracle of my life to me?See, I wanna know if you believe in any godor if you believe in many godsor better yetwhat gods believe in you.And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself,have the prayers you asked come true?And if they didn’t, did you feel denied?And if you felt denied,denied by who?I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirroron a day you’re feeling good.I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirroron a day you’re feeling bad.I wanna know the first person who taught you your beautycould ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass.If you ever reach enlightenmentwill you remember how to laugh?Have you ever been a song?Would you think less of meif I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key?And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetryI just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around mewho have learned the wisdom of silence.Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence?And if you do —I want you to tell me of a meadowwhere my skateboard will soar.See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living.I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving,and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes.I wanna know if you bleed sometimesfrom other people’s wounds,and if you dream sometimesthat this life is just a balloon —that if you wanted to, you could pop,but you never would‘cause you’d never want it to stop.If a tree fell in the forestand you were the only one there to hear —if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound,would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist,or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?And lastly, let me ask you this:If you and I went for a walkand the entire walk, we didn’t talk —do you think eventually, we’d… kiss?No, wait.That’s asking too much —after all,this is only our first date.
Andrea Gibson
grief is a housewhere the chairshave forgotten how to hold usthe mirrors how to reflect usthe walls how to contain usgrief is a house that disappearseach time someone knocks at the dooror rings the bella house that blows into the airat the slightest gustthat buries itself deep in the groundwhile everyone is sleepinggrief is a house where no one can protect youwhere the younger sisterwill grow older than the older onewhere the doorsno longer let you inor out
Jandy Nelson
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.
Mary Oliver
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T.S Eliot
I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They ’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!
Emily Dickinson
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
Robert Frost
My candle burns at both ends;It will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poetry is just so emo." he said. "Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.
John Green
You give but little when you give of your possessions.It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in meOlder and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.
Robinson Jeffers
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”But I say unto you, they are inseparable.Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Kahlil Gibran
Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
William Faulkner
Live not for Battles Won.Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.
Gwendolyn Brooks
April is the cruelest month, breedinglilacs out of the dead land, mixingmemory and desire, stirringdull roots with spring rain.
T.S Eliot
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Emily Dickinson
The rain to the wind said,You push and I'll pelt.'They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged--though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.
Robert Frost
Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.
Jack Kerouac
Music is the universal language of mankind.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.
W.S. Merwin
Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.
Lemony Snicket
Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.
Greg Bear
to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go
Mary Oliver
I am awaitingperpetually and forevera renaissance of wonder
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W.H. Auden
You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.
Rick Riordan
Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
Charles Bukowski
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
Robert Frost
This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.
T.S Eliot
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S Eliot
As it has been said:Love and a coughcannot be concealed.Even a small cough.Even a small love.
Anne Sexton
Let our scars fall in love.
Galway Kinnell
What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
Walt Whitman
You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing your placein the family of things.
Mary Oliver
If you are a dreamer come inIf you are a dreamer a wisher a liarA hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyerIf youre a pretender com sit by my fireFor we have some flax golden tales to spinCome in! Come in!
Shel Silverstein
Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I've tasted of desire,I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twiceI think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.
Robert Frost
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Robert Frost
Resist much, obey little.
Walt Whitman
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
E.E. Cummings
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
The Road Not TakenTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothtAnd be one traveler, long I stoodtAnd looked down one as far as I couldtTo where it bent in the undergrowth;t Then took the other, as just as fair,tAnd having perhaps the better claim,tBecause it was grassy and wanted wear;tThough as for that the passing theretHad worn them really about the same,t And both that morning equally laytIn leaves no step had trodden black.tOh, I kept the first for another day!tYet knowing how way leads on to way,tI doubted if I should ever come back.t I shall be telling this with a sightSomewhere ages and ages hence:tTwo roads diverged in a wood, and I—tI took the one less traveled by,tAnd that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.
Cassandra Clare
We don’t see things. We see reflections of our feelings and perceptions.
Debasish Mridha
You were born with love and hope. Why do you feel that you have no power to win in life?
Debasish Mridha
A new baby is the beginning of a new universe—his own unique universe.
Debasish Mridha
Your outer charm and beauty attract me. Your inner beauty of kindness and a caring heart seduces me.
Debasish Mridha
Be knowledgeable but humble. Be wise and simple.
Debasish Mridha
Don’t just wish and dream—take action to make it happen.
Debasish Mridha
Let us be loving, caring, and kind to everyone we meet in this beautiful journey called life. At the end nothing else matters.
Debasish Mridha
To win in life, never forget to be content competing with yourself.
Debasish Mridha