We just have too much lightning crammed into our hearts. Just want someone to put her ear to our chest and tell us how far away the storm is. — Lauren Zuniga, from “Dear Lemon Engine II,” The Smell of Good Mud. (Write Bloody Publishing; First Edition edition March 15, 2012)
There is pain in who we are, and the pain of love – because love itself is an opening and a wound – is a pain no one escapes except by escaping life itself. — Jeanette Winterson, from the Preface of Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood. (New Directions; unknown edition September 26, 2006) Originally published 1936.
Poems only convey the ghost of beauty, not beauty itself. — Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin (Penguin Classics, 2006)
The Vale of Soul-Making 