Rosemary > Rosemary's Quotes

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burden of the curse of Babel.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. 'The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's Poetry and Prose

“He will wipe the tears from all faces.' It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Her hair was a glory of tendrils for the snaring of husbands.”
― Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“...the whole sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock of the footprints of the storm.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula