"Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances."
— Robert Hass in an excerpt from “Meditation at Lagunitas”
"So I kept talking because nothing gets me going like knowing I should shut up. Oh, I should be quiet and full of potential like all those still flowers, but I know I am a weed and I’ve got to blow my seeds around the garden. I’ve got such faith in words, like the right combination spilling from my mouth could’ve made her look at me like she looked at all of them, eyes blue and bright as a kid’s."
Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her
"A poem is a private story, after all, no matter how apparently public. The reader is always overhearing a confession."
— Jorie Graham (via theparisreview)
"We all have bullets beneath our skin
we pray our lovers won’t flinch at when they find."
we pray our lovers won’t flinch at when they find."
— Andrea Gibson
"I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."
— John Green in The Fault in Our Stars
"Inelegantly and without my consent, time passed."
— Miranda July in “How to Tell Stories to Children”
“There are things better left untouched by words …”
— Anna Kamieńska, from “A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook”, translated by C. Cavanagh
"You are, at once, both the quiet and the confusion of my heart."
— Franz Kafka
"I’ve tried to get you out of my head but I can’t seem to get you out of my flesh. I think about your body day and night. When I try to read it’s you I’m reading. When I sit down to eat it’s you I’m eating."
— Jeanette Winterson in “Written on the Body”
