Cherem > Cherem's Quotes

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.
Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Her eyes are pure stars, and her fingers, if they touch you, freeze you to the bone.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“i spent the entire night casting spells to bring you back”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I promised no more poetry and I’d rather think of this as a confession: you are still the first person I want to share new things with.”
― Trista Mateer, Honeybee

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“I am singing now while Rome
burns.”
― Richard Siken

“Lighting new cigarettes,
pouring more
drinks.

It has been a beautiful
fight.

Still
is.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles … How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him ‘the butcher’.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“God says, Which one of you fuckers can get to me first?”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“The real power, as you and I well know, is collective. I can’t afford to be afraid of you, nor you of me. If it takes head-on collisions, let’s do it: this polite timidity is killing us.”
― Cherríe L. Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

“I surrendered my beliefs
and found myself at the tree of life
injecting my story into the veins of leaves
only to find that stories like forests
are subject to seasons”
― Saul Williams, , said the shotgun to the head.

“Vanaf de maan gezien zijn we allen even groot.”
― Multatuli

“Berlimpahnya penderitaan di negeri sendiri telah mengalahkan perasaan simpatimu terhadap apa yang terjadi di tempat jauh.”
― Multatuli, Max Havelaar, or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company

“Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again... said a shadow at the window... and you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time...

But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.”
― Emily Carroll, Through the Woods