Quotes by Poets - Page 192

We speak for those who cannot speak. We have a duty to tell the stories for those who do not have the advantages that we have to tell stories. We must not speak falsely. The stories that we are entrusted to tell are stories of our tribes, or the tribes into which we have been initiated.
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
Nothing that happens is meant to happen or not meant to happen. The ‘meant’ is the story we tell ourselves that allows us to make sense of what is fundamentally senseless. Does this make our lives less important? Only if that’s the story you want to tell yourself. Where do the stories end? They don’t. It’s stories all the way down. And all the way up.
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center.
Catherynne M. Valente
Books measure time in both moments and years. We all grow old but the stories never will.
R.M. Engelhardt (TALON)
Very well, you do so love rules! I shall make some up for you on the spot, so that my little moppet is not forced to wander the world in a soup of stories without laws. A tale may have exactly three beginnings: one for the audience, one for the artist, and one for the poor bastard who has to live in it.
Catherynne M. Valente
PERCIVAL: Now, who is telling the story?SEVERIN: The camera is telling the story. It's watching everything, and you can't lie to it, or it will know.PERCIVAL: My girl is so clever! No, the camera witnesses the story and records it, but it is outside the story. Like a very tiny god with one big, dark eye.... Which of [the characters] is the authority? Who controls how the story is told? And who is the audience, for whom all these wonderful things are meant?SEVERIN: They are all telling the story to me.
Catherynne M. Valente
How many beginnings can a story have, Daddy?""As many as you can eat, my lamb. But only one ending. Or maybe it's the other way around: one beginning and a whole Easter basket of endings.""Papa, don't be silly... A story has to start somewhere. And then it has to end somewhere. That's the whole point. That's how it is in real life.""But that's not how it is in real life, Rinny. Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even a spree. Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off. Half the time you don't even realize that what you're choosing for breakfast is the beginning of a story that won't pan out till you're sixty and staring at the pastry that made you a widower. No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story. Or never even get one so much as half-begun.
Catherynne M. Valente
It's only that the answers in most stories are boring because they are supplied by the real world rather than, well, something better. Something more stimulating. Sit down with the Greeks and the Romans, and the boring answers get more interesting. Seasons because a girl and a crocus. Death because a girl and an apple. The moon because a girl keeps driving her daft chariot into the sea.It's all down to girls, one way or another.
Catherynne M. Valente
Plot twist: everything goes exactly as planned.
Criss Jami
All the stories live in our bodies, he thinks. Every last one.
Linda Hogan
As you might expect, the geographical location of the capital of Fairyland is fickle and has a rather short temper. I'm afraid the whole thing moves around according to the needs of narrative.'September put her persimmon down in the long grass. 'What in the world does that mean?''I ... I SUSPECT it means that if we ACT like the kind of folk who would find a Fairy city whilst on various adventures involving tricksters, magical shoes, and hooliganism, it will come to us.'September blinked. 'Is that how things are done here?''Isn't that how they're done in your world?'September thought for a long moment. She thought of how children who acted politely were often treated as good and trustworthy, even if they pulled your hair and made fun of your name when grownups weren't around. She thought of how her father acted like a soldier, strict and plain and organized -- and how the army came for him. She thought of how her mother acted strong and happy even when she was sad, and so no one offered to help her, to make casseroles or watch September after school or come over for gin rummy and tea. And she thought of how she had acted just like a child in a story about Fairyland, discontent and complaining, and how the Green Wind had come for her, too.'I suppose that is how things are done in my world. It's hard to see it, though, on the other side.
Catherynne M. Valente
Dante Alighieri wrote his first book in the prosimetrum genre – La Vita Nuova – in 14th century Florence. Since I’m compiling this collection – my first indie publication – in Florence, just blocks from Dante’s house, and since his book involves a lost love, and ‘A New Life,’ I thought it fitting to emulate this style in my own casual, intuitive fashion. My hope is that the juxtaposition of poems, journal entries, essays and prose will create a story; a memoir in anarchistic vignettes.
Jalina Mhyana
The universe is made of stories, not atoms!
Muriel Rukeyser
Listen, everything is possible in here. You can burn every spinning wheel in the kingdom. You can cut your hair before he ever gets the chance to climb up. It is possible to decline the beanstalk. You can let the old witch dance at your wedding, hand out the kind of forgiveness that would wake the dead and sleeping. You can just walk away, get on a horse, and go wake some other maiden from her narrative coffin, if you’re brave, if you’re strong. What do you want? Do you want to escape? Or were you looking for that candy house?
Catherynne M. Valente
One spring patio is for rodeosniggled with iodine figures, weavedtapestries inside vast Tuileries.But that reminds me, how exactlydo words form brittle histories
Adam Fitzgerald
Come with me to the mountains. Every rock there tells a story.
Avijeet Das
There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Chinua Achebe
Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
A casket full of stories I presentFrom the ocean of my feelings and its moodSome bring with it a tempest of tearsSome make you sit and broodThere are a few pearls of optimism tooWhich are colourful and multi-hued!
Neelam Saxena Chandra
One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask, is whether a given story we tell about our lives is actually true, and whether the opinions we go over every day have any foundation or are things we repeat to ourselves simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on is not only not true - it actually never was true. Not now not ever. There is another form of obsolescence that can fray at the cocoon we have spun about ourselves, that is, the story was true at one time, and for an extended period; the story was even true and good to us, but now it is no longer true and no longer of any benefit, in fact our continued retelling of it simply imprisons us. We are used to the prison however, we have indeed fitted cushions and armchairs and made it comfortable and we have locked the door from the inside.The imprisoning story I identified by the time the entree was served was one I had told myself for a long time. “In order to write I need peace and quiet and an undisturbed place far from others or the possibility of being disturbed. I knew however, that if I wanted to enter the next creative stage, something had to change; I simply did not have enough free space between traveling, speaking and being a good father and husband to write what I wanted to write. The key in the lock turned surprisingly easy, I simply said to myself, “What if I acted as if it wasn’t true any more, what if it had been true at one time, but now at this stage in the apprenticeship I didn’t need that kind of insulation anymore, what if I could write anywhere and at any time?” One of the interesting mercies of this kind of questioning is that it is hard to lose by asking: if the story is still true, we will soon find out and can go back to telling it. If it is not we have turned the key, worked the hinges and walked out into the clear air again with a simple swing of the door.
David Whyte
Knowing how to dream is more important than the story, because the story tells itself.
Dejan Stojanovic
The length of novels, poems and stories, is measured by the number of missing words; a thousand pages become one, one becomes a thousand.
Dejan Stojanovic
Good stories are like those noble wild animals that make their home in hidden spots, and you must often settle down at the entrance of the caves and woods and lie in wait for them a long time.
Hermann Hesse
...stories break silence and nourish those who work, feel, and dream.From Costa Rica: A Traveler's Literary Companion
Carmen Naranjo
I'm beginning to feel as though everything has happened before, that our story has already been told. Just as we were powerless to stop the fox stealing the chicken, so there seems to be an inevitability to all that takes place at Mosel. This is a ghost story. And we have somehow become the ghosts of these young men who worked this estate before the Great War. The living are the dead.
Helen Humphreys
They rode up the faint marks of the old trace where thousands of sojourners walking and riding both had crossed it and before them the buffalo far back in time. She joined the stream of humanity that had gone down that road, just one more story in a stream of narratives both likely and unlikely that were being told somewhere even now, by someone, in a far place.
Paulette Jiles
Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.
Catherynne M. Valente
There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.
André Breton
He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.
Sherman Alexie
If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?
Thomas Hardy
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
Ben Okri
Our stories are what we have,” Our Good Mother says. “Our stories preserve us. we give them to one another. Our stories have value. Do you understand?
Julianna Baggott
Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.
Sylvia Plath
Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.
Ben Okri
To fight discouragement, remind yourself of the basics: I can write.I have the opportunity to do so. I love what I write. Now smile and be thankful.
Richelle E. Goodrich
OtherwiseI 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
Happiness is in contentment, gratitude, and love. It is a lifestyle, not a location.
Ogwo David Emenike
I am grateful for hands to tickle with. Not so grateful for that process in reverse, however.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Gratitude doesn't change the scenery.  It merely washes clean the glass you look through so you can clearly see the colors.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Gratitude is the real treasure God wants us to find, because it isn't the pot of gold but the rainbow that colors our world.
Richelle E. Goodrich
You were formed inside a borrowed womb—a nourishing safe haven for months—then delivered through painful effort and sacrifice by a woman willing to give you the precious gift of life. That truth alone deserves your gratitude and respect.
Richelle E. Goodrich
People are complaining of having rags and not riches, but I find it a blessing just to have rags, to wipe away the dirt and dust that may come in the course of life.
Anthony Liccione
Natales grate numeras?(Do you count your birthdays with gratitude?)
Horace
Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Let us never be afraid of innocent joy; God is good and what he does is well done; resign yourself to everything, even happiness; ask for the spirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, for the spirit of joy and gratitude.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Happiness isn't complicated. It is a humble state of gratitude for simple pleasures, tender mercies, recognized blessings, and inherent beauty.
Richelle E. Goodrich
This a a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before.
Maya Angelou
I appreciate the gratitude every day.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.
Audre Lorde
The humanitarian is a treasure hunter seeking gems of remedy and appreciation.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts, and no one thank.
Christina Rossetti
I do not know how to thank you.''I can tell you,' said Obierika. 'Kill one of your sons for me.''That will not be enough,' said Okonkwo.'Then kill yourself,' said Obierika.
Chinua Achebe
Have the wisdom to perceive all there is to be thankful for, and then be thankful for the wisdom to perceive things so clearly.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Oh what marvels fill me with thanksgiving!The deep mahogany of a leaf once green. The feathered fronds of tiny icicles coating every twig and branch in a wintry landscape. The feel of goosebumps thawing after endured frozen temperatures. Both hands clamped around a hot mug of herbal tea. The aromatic whiff of mint under my nose. The stir of emotion from a child's cry for mommy. A gift of love detached of strings. Spotted lilies collecting raindrops in a cupped clump of petals. The vibrant mélange of colors on butterfly wings. The milky luster of a single pearl. Rainbows reflecting off iridescence bubbles. Awe-struck silence evoked by any form of beauty.Avocado flecks in your eyes.Warm hands on my face.Sweetness on the tongue.The harmony of voices.An answered prayer.A pink balloon.A caress.A smile.More.These have become my treasures by virtue of thanksgiving.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Thanksgiving is not only being aware of the abundance of good in the world but embracing it.
Richelle E. Goodrich
i thank the universe for takingeverything it has takenand giving to meeverything it is giving-balance
Rupi Kaur
Gratitude does not mean the absence of solitude, but the presence of a positive attitude in spite of.
Gift Gugu Mona
I choose to say it is well even when it is not, because in every situation I find myself in, I still learn from it.
Gift Gugu Mona
Gratitude will make you feel great, choose to be grateful.
Gift Gugu Mona
It is easy to say I am thankful for the sweet and beautiful things in life: flower gardens, ice cream cones, diamond rings, dances under moonlight, children’s laughter, birdsongs, and the like. The challenge is recognizing things of value in the dark, sour, uglier parts of life. But if you look hard enough, you will find that even tough times offer pearls worthy of gratitude.
Richelle E. Goodrich