Sharon Olds, "35/10"

Brushing out my daughter's dark
silken hair before the mirror
I see the gray gleaming on my head,
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a small
pale flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, gold and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It's an old
story—the oldest we have on our planet—
the story of replacement.

Roxane Gay, NYT Op Ed

Here's the thing about anger. We only seem to prioritize one kind — anger in reaction to progress. And we never seem to acknowledge the anger rising out of oppression, marginalization, and under representation.

Laurie Moore, "People Like That Are the Only People Here"

How can it be described? How can any of it be described? The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things. The narrator is the one who has stayed home, but then, after- ward, presses her mouth upon the traveler's mouth, in order to make the mouth work, to make the mouth say, say, say. One cannot go to a place and speak of it; one cannot both see and say, not really. One can go, and upon return'ing make a lot of hand motions and indications with the arms. The mouth itself, working at the speed of light, at the eye's instructions, is neces- sarily struck still; so fast, so much to report, it hangs open and dumb as a gutted bell. All that unsayable life! That's where the narrator comes in. 

John Armstrong, John Aikin (1804). “The Art of Preserving Health”

Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight, 

'Tis not too late tomorrow to be brave.

Rumi, "The Divers Clothes Lying Empty on the Beach"

You're sitting here with us, but you're also out walking
in a field at dawn. You are yourself
the animal we hunt when you come with us on the hunt.
You're in your body like a plant is solid in the ground,
yet you're wind. You're the diver's clothes
lying empty on the beach. You're the fish.
...

Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook"

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Billy Colllin, "Momento Mori"

It doesn't take much to remind me
what a mayfly I am,
what a soap bubble floating over the children's party.

Jerry Seinfeld OpEd 24 August 2020

Wipe your tears, wipe your butt and pull it together.

James Baldwin, "Giovanni's Room"

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Dionne Brand, July 2020

This we fear — this we know — that all of our thoughts will be rushed into editorial pages, used up in committee meetings; all the rich imaginings of activists and thinkers who urge us to live otherwise may be disappeared, modified into reform and inclusion, equity, diversity and palliation.

But I hear what they say and many others do as well, "Look we should never live the way we lived before; our lives need not be framed by the purely extractive, based on nothing but capital." Everything is up in the air, all narratives for the moment have been blown open — the statues are falling — all the metrics are off, if only briefly. 

Winston Churchill

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

De Medicina — Aulus Cornelius Celsus 25 B.C — 50 A.D.

Live in rooms full of light. Avoid heavy food. Be moderate in drinking of wine. Take massage, baths, exercise and gymnastics. Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water. Change surroundings and take long journeys. Strictly avoid frightening ideas. Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements. Listen to music.

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

There's something almost tedious about disaster. Don't you find? I mean, at first it's all dramatic, 'Oh my God, the economy's collapsing' … but then that keeps happening, it just keeps collapsing, week after week.

Langstone Hughes

…
She, Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul's own mastery.
...

Dean Young, "Delphiniums in a Window Box"

…

Did you see the meteor shower?
Did it feel like something swallowed?
Every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you I'm talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. Everyone says,
Come to your senses, and I do, of you.
Every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples
at the farmers' market, every melon,
plum, I come undone, undone.

Cornelia Funke

We all know from fairy tales, you can never say no to impossible tasks. 

G. K. Chesterton

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men not having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily, or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament. Thus, very great artists are able to be ordinary men—men like Shakespeare or Browning.

Patti Smith

I just did my thing. I just plowed through it. Whether people liked me or not, I just went ahead and did what I was doing.

Jenny Holzer

Any surplus is immoral.

Lolo Goldbach, "Birthday Poem for Daddy", August 2018

Every year, you feel pure.
It's your day; it's free to play.
You have a birthday every year -
You're older,
And that's sincere.

Blake, "The Voice of the Devil"

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

Tracy Morgan, quoted in The New Yorker

I don't feel pressure — I apply pressure.

Horace Walpole

When men write for profit, they cannot afford to be delicate.

Gillian Rose, Love's Work

There is no democracy in any love relation: only mercy.

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. 

Blake, “The Voice of the Devil”

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for 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.

Lin Manuel Miranda on Twitter

Gmorning to the distance between you and okay The logistics of your morning The call you have to make The work to be done The coffee There are things to be learned while you navigate the distance It'll be okay You'll get to okay

Auden, "The Age of Anxiety"

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

Anita Loos and John Emerson, How to Write Photoplays (1920)

Above all things the scenario writer should keep alive. Just keep yourself with lively, laughing, thinking people, think about things yourself, and cultivate a respect for new ideas of any kind. Take care of these small ideas and the big plots will take care of themselves.

Derek Walcott, "Love After Love"

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.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Warren Buffet

It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.

Jeremiah Tower, on being in the spotlight

You got on the tiger. No complaining, no explaining . . . shut up and either get off the tiger or just make it better for you than worse.

Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Gregg Popovich, coach of the San Antonio Spurs

On why charitable contributions matter:

"Because we're rich as hell, and we don't need it all, and other people need it. And you're a jerk if you don't give it."

George Eliot

It's never too late to become what you might have been.

Semi Chellas

                                                                        

                                                                                    He called loudly for the stars to bend

                                                                                                                                    —  Yeats

 

October tastes like pennies on my skin,

    a taste of fingers counting change.  It's in

    these bitter autumn twilights I regret

    the cold too cold to let us out.  Within

    the circle of the lamplight I forget

    the dark outside, which, having lit the lamp,

    I cannot see.  The nights are getting damp,

    and longer, too, and it may snow.  I let

myself be kept inside, inside the circle of the lamp.

 

The window makes a sort of frame for night:

    it's how we know the night, as if we'd hung

    a picture on the farthest wall, of night.

    The stars are scattered as if they'd been flung

    in random patterns, throwing back their light

    into the room, where they are not as bright

    as lamplight is, nor are they bright as stars.          

    The taste of metal lingers on my tongue;

and this is how I know the bitter taste of stars.

 

It's how I lose the darkness, looking out

    from light, at darkness kept within its frame.

    And this is how we make the loss our game,

    it's how we count the stars on nights like these,

    it's how we count them all and leave some out:

    by counting as we count the leaves of trees,

    by counting as if they were all the same.

    The ones we know by name we count by name —

And then we count our fingers by such names as these.

 

And this is how my pen begins to sound

    on paper, just like books against their shelves —

    like ink on ink — like words against themselves —

    like stones in water — leaves upon the ground —

    It's how I see my hands, how they are wound

    about the pen, which, in my hand, grows warm.

    It's how I see the letters start to form: 

    they follow black behind the pen, around

its shadow, only slightly darker than themselves.

 

Flaubert, quoted by Shirley Hazard in Green on Capri

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are the three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Phillip Roth, in The New York Times, January 16, 2018

C.M. Looking back, how do you recall your 50-plus years as a writer?

P.R. Exhilaration and groaning. Frustration and freedom. Inspiration and uncertainty. Abundance and emptiness. Blazing forth and muddling through. The day-by-day repertoire of oscillating dualities that any talent withstands — and tremendous solitude, too. And the silence: 50 years in a room silent as the bottom of a pool, eking out, when all went well, my minimum daily allowance of usable prose.

Joanna Klink, New Year

We woke to the darkness before our eyes,

unable to take the measure of the loss.

Who are they. What are we. What have we

   abandoned to arrive with such violence at this hour.

In answer we drew back, covered our ears

with our hands to the heedless victory, or vowed,

   as I did, into the changed air, never to consent.