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“And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man.” —A. E. HOUSMAN, “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff”
“Coercive as coma, frail as bloom innuendoes of your inverse dawn suffuse the self; our every corpuscle become an elf.” —MINA LOY, “Moreover, the Moon,” The Lost Lunar Baedeker
“The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.” —THEODORE ROETHKE, “Praise to the End!”
“A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?” —OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“All day and all night my desire for you unwinds like a poisonous snake.” —SAMAR SEN, “Love”
‘Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.’
“I ate the mythology & dreamt.” —YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, “Blackberries”
“Down the hill I went, and then, I forgot the ways of men For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool Wakened ecstasy in me.” —SARA TEASDALE “August Moonrise,” Flame and Shadow
“Listening to the prisoned cricket Shake its terrible dissembling Music in the granite hill” —LOUISE BOGAN, “Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom”
She laughed at that, silvery cold laughter that rose up out of her throat like crows going to wing.
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure, and we admire it so because it calmly disdains to destroy us.” —RAINER MARIA RILKE, “The First Elegy,” Duino Elegies
The knight touched the stone around his neck, and Kaye felt magic sweep around her, settling on her body with an oppressive weight. She felt smothered for a moment as scents became vague and her vision dulled. “Remember, we have to make it look real,” he said as she choked. “What are you doing to me?” Kaye managed to say. Everything felt numb and strange. “That glamour you were wearing would fool no one. I am simply restoring the one you should have been wearing.”
“You whom I could not save Listen to me.” —CZESLAW MILOSZ, “Dedication”
You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.
“A word is dead When it is said Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.” —EMILY DICKINSON, “VI. A Word.”
“But lest you are my enemy, I must enquire.” “O no, my dear, let all that be; What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?” —WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, “The Mask”
“And for those masks who linger on To feast at night upon the pure sea!” —ARTHUR RIMBAUD, “Does She Dance”
“For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.” —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet CXLVII
“In the hills giant oaks fall upon their knees You can touch parts You have no right to—” —KAY RYAN, “Crown”
“I’m here because you are kind and lovely and terribly, terribly brave,” he said, voice pitched low. “And because I want to be.”
“Better to reign in Hell, then to serve in Heav’n.” —JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost (Book I)
