Lyn Hejinian > Quotes

“In every country is a word which attempts the sound of cats, to match an inisolable portrait in the clouds to a din in the air. But the constant noise is not an omen of music to come.”
― Lyn Hejinian, My Life

“People must flatter their own eyes with their pathetic lives. The things I was saying followed logically the things that I had said before, yet bore no relation to what I was thinking and feeling.”
― Lyn Hejinian, My Life

“I was eventually to become one person, gathered up maybe, during a pause, at a comma.”
― Lyn Hejinian

“To some extent, each sentence has to be the whole story.”
― Lyn Hejinian

“A German goldsmith covered a bit of metal with cloth in the 14th century and gave mankind its first button. It was hard to know this as politics, because it plays like the work of one person, but nothing is isolated in history -- certain humans are situations.”
― Lyn Hejinian, My Life

“The sky was packed

which by appearing endless seems inevitable.
The flag droops straight down. The horse
in dry sand walks with a chirping noise
from friction of the particles
and counterarguments like pack ice
puff in the waves there, blowing fountains
of pearl. The ground.”
― Lyn Hejinian, The Cold of Poetry

“Allegories are told with a purpose whose possibility is lost
Until a potato-eater appears and eats potatoes

”
― Lyn Hejinian