quote archive
Dec. 15th, 2021 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
latespringAfter asking my tl for the same quote two years in a row (the first one in this post), hwa has rightly pointed out that I need to start a quote archive, so here's this! I have not included things from poem-a-day, since I'm already doing a roundup of sorts in my monthly media posts.
I'll come back and update every so often. I'll need to figure out the formatting + how I want to sort it, but that's a problem for later. Also this is non-comprehensive etc etc.
—From "Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma: ‘Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze’" by Alexandra Pollard (link)
The first time the two women sleep together, Héloïse asks, “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” It’s a knock-out line. “A relationship is about inventing your own language,” says Sciamma. “You’ve got the jokes, you’ve got the songs, you have this anecdote that’s going to make you laugh three years later. It’s this language that you build. That’s what you mourn for when you’re losing someone you love. This language you’re not going to speak with anybody else.”
—From "Vita Nova" by Louise Glück (link)
Surely spring has been returned to me, this time
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.
—From "What the Living Do" by Marie Howe (link)
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.
—This is not to make them speechless, it's to make yourself feel worthy of the world.
I don't actually remember which episode of QCYN1 this was from, but it's always stuck with me. I think it was Lian Huaiwei who said it?
—From "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott (link)
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
—From "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith (link)
Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
—From "When Your Name Is Amanda Bubble, You Don’t Get to Cry at the Bar" by Jennifer Bullis (link)
Why, then, am I a stranger to fiction?
The problem with stories is they won’t write
themselves.
Meanwhile, even the tiniest poems are hard at work,
changing tires and scraping barnacles from hulls.
God, do I have to explain every little thing to you?
And if home is where the art is, why are you
leaving again,
and when are you going to come back?
—From "Shipwrecks and Drownings" by Chelsea Dingman (link)
But
in long months alone, I’ve learned there’s love
in drowning. In having someone to watch
as I struggle, each twist of mouth
to sky. To pull my body
from the dark & lay it down.
—From "The Crane Wife" by CJ Hauser (link)
Wading through the muck of the Aransas Reserve I understood that every chance for food matters. Every pool of drinkable water matters. Every wolfberry dangling from a twig, in Texas, in January, matters. The difference between sustaining life and not having enough was that small.
If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it. You will go to the gulf. You will count every wolfberry. You will measure the depth of each puddle.
—From "Sacred Emily" by Gertrude Stein (link)
How do you do I forgive you everything and there is nothing to forgive.
Never the less.
Leave it to me.
—From "when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there" by Marty McConnell (link)
Maybe it’s time to celebrate the hideous. Not
to confess with some hope for absolution,
but to gather all the terrible selves and minutes
and show them the trees, and the way the rain
has just abated so the air has ocean in it
though we’re dry and waiting. Part of me died here
so another could go on.
—From "Death Wish" by Josh Alex Baker (link)
I ask when
is the last time you returned yourself to yourself. I
am a hypocrite to make
you answer what I cannot. Love
is a death wish between two men bold enough to believe in it. To
love you is to fade daily. To leave you
is to die sooner.
—From "‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’" by Heather Havrilesky (link)
Shame creates imaginary worlds inside your head. This haunted house you’re creating is forged from your shame. No one else can see it, so you keep trying to describe it to them. You find ways to say, “You don’t want any part of this mess. I’m mediocre, aging rapidly, and poor. Do yourself a favor and leave me behind.” You want to be left behind, though. That way, no one bears witness to what you’ve become.
It’s time to come out of hiding. It’s time to step into the light and be seen, shame and wrinkles and failures and fears and all.
—From An Interview with Francine J. Harris by Kaveh Akbar(link)
I get that, but the truth is that there's no good way to erase what transpired through writing. It doesn't fix it. So I guess I'm just living with that guilt. There are plenty of things, especially in this second book, where there's guilt that I just got to sit with. I always think it's interesting when people say that writing is therapeutic. I mean, that shit doesn't go away. It's still there. It's not therapy. If anything, it's math. You're trying to move the parts around to see if you can make sense of them.
"—From "Maybe Under Some Other Sky" by Willie Perdomo (link)
Ask me, Poet, Did I love her?
Breast against bristle, penny eyes—
I loved Rose the way fours
Exchange blows, the way fractures
Need islands, the way we tremble
In the glow of dead-ass truth—
You wanted to stay awake
Just to see the end with her.
—From "Poem for Haruko" by June Jordan (link)
I never thought I’d keep a record of my pain
or happiness
like candles lighting the entire soft lace
of the air
around the full length of your hair/a shower
organized by God
—From "Vow" by Diana Khoi Nguyen (link)
It will never be enough, the bull kelp like a whip coiling in tender hands,
hands who know to take or be taken, but take nothing with them: I will marry you.
I will marry you. So we can owe what we own to every beautiful thing.
—From "February & my love is in another state" by José Olivarez (link)
in love & in solitude:
alone is the home with the warmest glow.
—From "Dysphoria" by Oliver Baez Bendorf (link)
It’s true that I’m im-
patient under affliction. So?
Most of what the dead can
do is difficult to carry. As for
gender I can’t explain it
any more than a poem: there
was an instinct, I followed
it. A song. A bell.
—From "Self-Compassion" by James Crews (link)
Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.
—From "An Interview with Andrew Garfield" by Esmé Weijun Wang interviewing Andrew Garfield (link)
I think about a profound moment when my mom was sick with cancer. I was struggling with it, and before she passed, I was, like any person, resistant and angry and having terrible anxiety about it and what it meant and where it was leading. It was a really hard thing to accept, of course. And it still is. I still find it hard to accept that she’s no longer here.
But I remember I was walking along—I was on Fire Island, in New York, prepping for tick, tick… Boom! or Tammy Faye, and I had to take a break because I had this knot in my chest and I just couldn’t get rid of it.
I went for a walk on the beach. The sun was setting and it was freezing. I found I needed to jump, so I just jumped into the ocean. And it’s funny: as soon as my full body and head were submerged, it was like I got the medicine, and my chest released, and I let it all go. My interpretation of that moment was that it was the wisdom of nature, the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of the ocean letting me know, Hey. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s horrible. I’m not taking away this unique pain you’re feeling, but just so you know, us out here, us water molecules—we’ve been seeing this for millennia. And actually, this is the best-case scenario for you to lose her, rather than for her to lose you. This is a much better situation.
And, again, my ego was holding on; my ego thought I knew better. My ego said, No, this doesn’t make sense. No, no, no, it should be this way; it should be that way. But actually it took the ocean, the greater opponent, to just hold me under and say, It’s really horrible. And sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years, and they will continue to, and you’ve just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. Some illusion has been lifted. You’re in a realer version of the world now, and it’s painful.
I'll come back and update every so often. I'll need to figure out the formatting + how I want to sort it, but that's a problem for later. Also this is non-comprehensive etc etc.
—From "Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma: ‘Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze’" by Alexandra Pollard (link)
The first time the two women sleep together, Héloïse asks, “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” It’s a knock-out line. “A relationship is about inventing your own language,” says Sciamma. “You’ve got the jokes, you’ve got the songs, you have this anecdote that’s going to make you laugh three years later. It’s this language that you build. That’s what you mourn for when you’re losing someone you love. This language you’re not going to speak with anybody else.”
—From "Vita Nova" by Louise Glück (link)
Surely spring has been returned to me, this time
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.
—From "What the Living Do" by Marie Howe (link)
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.
—This is not to make them speechless, it's to make yourself feel worthy of the world.
I don't actually remember which episode of QCYN1 this was from, but it's always stuck with me. I think it was Lian Huaiwei who said it?
—From "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott (link)
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
—From "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith (link)
Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
—From "When Your Name Is Amanda Bubble, You Don’t Get to Cry at the Bar" by Jennifer Bullis (link)
Why, then, am I a stranger to fiction?
The problem with stories is they won’t write
themselves.
Meanwhile, even the tiniest poems are hard at work,
changing tires and scraping barnacles from hulls.
God, do I have to explain every little thing to you?
And if home is where the art is, why are you
leaving again,
and when are you going to come back?
—From "Shipwrecks and Drownings" by Chelsea Dingman (link)
But
in long months alone, I’ve learned there’s love
in drowning. In having someone to watch
as I struggle, each twist of mouth
to sky. To pull my body
from the dark & lay it down.
—From "The Crane Wife" by CJ Hauser (link)
Wading through the muck of the Aransas Reserve I understood that every chance for food matters. Every pool of drinkable water matters. Every wolfberry dangling from a twig, in Texas, in January, matters. The difference between sustaining life and not having enough was that small.
If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it. You will go to the gulf. You will count every wolfberry. You will measure the depth of each puddle.
—From "Sacred Emily" by Gertrude Stein (link)
How do you do I forgive you everything and there is nothing to forgive.
Never the less.
Leave it to me.
—From "when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there" by Marty McConnell (link)
Maybe it’s time to celebrate the hideous. Not
to confess with some hope for absolution,
but to gather all the terrible selves and minutes
and show them the trees, and the way the rain
has just abated so the air has ocean in it
though we’re dry and waiting. Part of me died here
so another could go on.
—From "Death Wish" by Josh Alex Baker (link)
I ask when
is the last time you returned yourself to yourself. I
am a hypocrite to make
you answer what I cannot. Love
is a death wish between two men bold enough to believe in it. To
love you is to fade daily. To leave you
is to die sooner.
—From "‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’" by Heather Havrilesky (link)
Shame creates imaginary worlds inside your head. This haunted house you’re creating is forged from your shame. No one else can see it, so you keep trying to describe it to them. You find ways to say, “You don’t want any part of this mess. I’m mediocre, aging rapidly, and poor. Do yourself a favor and leave me behind.” You want to be left behind, though. That way, no one bears witness to what you’ve become.
It’s time to come out of hiding. It’s time to step into the light and be seen, shame and wrinkles and failures and fears and all.
—From An Interview with Francine J. Harris by Kaveh Akbar(link)
I get that, but the truth is that there's no good way to erase what transpired through writing. It doesn't fix it. So I guess I'm just living with that guilt. There are plenty of things, especially in this second book, where there's guilt that I just got to sit with. I always think it's interesting when people say that writing is therapeutic. I mean, that shit doesn't go away. It's still there. It's not therapy. If anything, it's math. You're trying to move the parts around to see if you can make sense of them.
"—From "Maybe Under Some Other Sky" by Willie Perdomo (link)
Ask me, Poet, Did I love her?
Breast against bristle, penny eyes—
I loved Rose the way fours
Exchange blows, the way fractures
Need islands, the way we tremble
In the glow of dead-ass truth—
You wanted to stay awake
Just to see the end with her.
—From "Poem for Haruko" by June Jordan (link)
I never thought I’d keep a record of my pain
or happiness
like candles lighting the entire soft lace
of the air
around the full length of your hair/a shower
organized by God
—From "Vow" by Diana Khoi Nguyen (link)
It will never be enough, the bull kelp like a whip coiling in tender hands,
hands who know to take or be taken, but take nothing with them: I will marry you.
I will marry you. So we can owe what we own to every beautiful thing.
—From "February & my love is in another state" by José Olivarez (link)
in love & in solitude:
alone is the home with the warmest glow.
—From "Dysphoria" by Oliver Baez Bendorf (link)
It’s true that I’m im-
patient under affliction. So?
Most of what the dead can
do is difficult to carry. As for
gender I can’t explain it
any more than a poem: there
was an instinct, I followed
it. A song. A bell.
—From "Self-Compassion" by James Crews (link)
Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.
—From "An Interview with Andrew Garfield" by Esmé Weijun Wang interviewing Andrew Garfield (link)
I think about a profound moment when my mom was sick with cancer. I was struggling with it, and before she passed, I was, like any person, resistant and angry and having terrible anxiety about it and what it meant and where it was leading. It was a really hard thing to accept, of course. And it still is. I still find it hard to accept that she’s no longer here.
But I remember I was walking along—I was on Fire Island, in New York, prepping for tick, tick… Boom! or Tammy Faye, and I had to take a break because I had this knot in my chest and I just couldn’t get rid of it.
I went for a walk on the beach. The sun was setting and it was freezing. I found I needed to jump, so I just jumped into the ocean. And it’s funny: as soon as my full body and head were submerged, it was like I got the medicine, and my chest released, and I let it all go. My interpretation of that moment was that it was the wisdom of nature, the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of the ocean letting me know, Hey. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s horrible. I’m not taking away this unique pain you’re feeling, but just so you know, us out here, us water molecules—we’ve been seeing this for millennia. And actually, this is the best-case scenario for you to lose her, rather than for her to lose you. This is a much better situation.
And, again, my ego was holding on; my ego thought I knew better. My ego said, No, this doesn’t make sense. No, no, no, it should be this way; it should be that way. But actually it took the ocean, the greater opponent, to just hold me under and say, It’s really horrible. And sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years, and they will continue to, and you’ve just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. Some illusion has been lifted. You’re in a realer version of the world now, and it’s painful.
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Date: 2021-12-16 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-17 06:18 am (UTC)