"behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain."
— Bob Dylan

"The saddest thing is a retarded man who is crying and promising a broken egg that it will still be a chicken some day.
And that they'll play together in a field when it gets better."
— Chris Onstad

"The saddest thing is an old bag lady, freezing to death in the snow on Christmas Eve, and the last thing she sees is a family in a nice warm diner getting beheaded by the Taliban."
— Chris Onstad

"The saddest thing is a little girl who is told by her own mother and father that she will never be pretty.

And then they open the front door, and on the porch is a little white suitcase, with all of her things in it."
— Chris Onstad

"Sometimes when the wind blows through the leaves, it sounds like your name. It’s like a sigh then. The most beautiful sound I ever heard. A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer – Gem-ma, Gem-ma – and then the leaves trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks."
— Libba Bray

"The saddest thing is when the toilet from an abandoned space station falls back to earth, lands upside-down on a child who was playing alone in the backyard, and smooshes them into the shape of half a hard-boiled egg.
...And when they lift the toilet off of the child, two lips at the top of the bloody mound say, on their dying breath, "I love you, mommy."
— Chris Onstad

"Mawah meenon ne le plus poohlala" I say with an affected bow"
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Inspiration is some kind of always-there thing, but sometimes it's just some kind of unreachable thing."
— Yannick Heywang

"می خواستم به شما بگویم
“سلام “

اما شما سریع رد شدید
می خواستم به شما بگویم حال شما چطور است؟

اما شما به من نگاه نکردید
می خواستم بگویم حال من خوب نیست
اما شما دیگر رفته بودید
برای همین هیچ چیز به شما نگفتم
فقط پوست موزم را زیر پایتان انداختم
تا زمین بخورید و یک لحظه بایستید
شاید این بار مرا ببینید
"
— شل سیــلور استاین

"I like compromises. They're the only thing in the world that brings peace, but little satisfaction."
— Kathy Kaleb

"Sometimes when the wind blows through the leaves, it sounds like your name. It’s like a sigh then. The most beautiful sound I ever heard. A gentle breeze catches in the branches then and I hear it, soft and low, a murmured prayer – Gem-ma, Gem-ma – and then the leaves trail delicate fingers across my cold cheeks. Li"
— Libba Bray

"Poetry tries to bridge the abyss lying between the name and the thing. That language is a problem is no news to poets."
— Charles Simic (The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs)