I’m in love with people’s hands and the way they clench their fists and the way their fingertips lightly press down onto piano keys or thighs. Calloused fingers or dainty fingers. Hands writing poems or memos or parking tickets. Hands writing futures. To me, every crease on the palm is a love line. — Mesogeios… Continue reading Mesogeios
To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. — William Wordsworth, from “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1918. Editor: Arthur Quiller-Couch. (Oxford University Press March 26, 1963)
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and… Continue reading Franklin D. Roosevelt
Little Alice fell d o w n the hOle, bumped her head and bruised her soul ― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (Macmillan 26 November 1865)
If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know. — Hans Christian Andersen, Letter to Edvard Collin in 1835
this much belongs to us, to touch each other thus; the gods can grip us more forcefully. The choice is theirs. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Second Elegy,” Duino Elegies, transl. by Edward Snow (North Point Press, 2001)
I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back. — Paulo Coelho
I. The powers of language are the solitary ladies who sing, desolate, with this voice of mine that I hear from a distance. And far away, in the black sand, lies a girl heavy with ancestral music. Where is death itself? I have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light. Branches die in… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
He lived his short century in dreams–not even about the past but about some shadowy world of tenderness and beauty … — Сергей Константинович Маковский / Sergei K. Makovsky
The Weight of Oranges My cup’s the same sand colour as bread. Rain’s the same colour of a building across the street, its torn red dahlias and ruined a book propped on the sill. Rain articulates the skins of everything, pink of bricks from the fire they baked in, lizard green leaves, the wrinkled tongues… Continue reading Anne Michaels
The Vale of Soul-Making 