Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"

…
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
...

Noah Davis (painter)

I'd rather fail at painting than be successful at anything else.

Semi Chellas, "Fugue" (1986)

I think about the word "drunk". It is almost onomatopoeic: "drunk" is the sound you make, falling down from being drunk. 

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

     Sundays too my father got up early

     and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

     then with cracked hands that ached

     from labor in the weekday weather made

     banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

     I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

     When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

     and slowly I would rise and dress,

     fearing the chronic angers of that house,

     Speaking indifferently to him,

     who had driven out the cold

     and polished my good shoes as well.

     What did I know, what did I know

     of love's austere and lonely offices?

Galway Kinnell, “Wait”

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours. Haven't they

carried you everywhere, up to now?