Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with.
Tell me why you loved them,
then tell me why they loved you.

Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through.
Tell me what the word home means to you
and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name
just by the way you describe your bedroom
when you were eight.

See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate,
and if that day still trembles beneath your bones.

Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain
or bounce in the bellies of snow?
And if you were to build a snowman,
would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms
or would leave your snowman armless
for the sake of being harmless to the tree?
And if you would,
would you notice how that tree weeps for you
because your snowman has no arms to hug you
every time you kiss him on the cheek?

Do you kiss your friends on the cheek?
Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad
even if it makes your lover mad?
Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion
or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?

See, I wanna know what you think of your first name,
and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy
when she spoke it for the very first time.

I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind.
Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.
Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old
beating up little boys at school.

If you were walking by a chemical plant
where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds
would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud
or would you whisper
“That cloud looks like a fish,
and that cloud looks like a fairy!”

Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin?
Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea?
And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me —
how would you explain the miracle of my life to me?

See, I wanna know if you believe in any god
or if you believe in many gods
or better yet
what gods believe in you.
And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself,
have the prayers you asked come true?
And if they didn’t, did you feel denied?
And if you felt denied,
denied by who?

I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
on a day you’re feeling good.
I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
on a day you’re feeling bad.
I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty
could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass.

If you ever reach enlightenment
will you remember how to laugh?

Have you ever been a song?
Would you think less of me
if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key?
And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry
I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me
who have learned the wisdom of silence.

Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence?
And if you do —
I want you to tell me of a meadow
where my skateboard will soar.

See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living.
I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving,
and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes.
I wanna know if you bleed sometimes
from other people’s wounds,
and if you dream sometimes
that this life is just a balloon —
that if you wanted to, you could pop,
but you never would
‘cause you’d never want it to stop.

If a tree fell in the forest
and you were the only one there to hear —
if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound,
would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist,
or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?

And lastly, let me ask you this:

If you and I went for a walk
and the entire walk, we didn’t talk —
do you think eventually, we’d… kiss?

No, wait.
That’s asking too much —
after all,
this is only our first date.”
― Andrea Gibson

“I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that new born river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.”
― Andrea Gibson, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

“I can guarantee a haircut will never tell you anything about someone's gender, who they love, or how they fuck.”
― Andrea Gibson

“You can stand on the cliff of my heart and shout nothing but ‘ugly’ through me. I promise all I will echo back is ‘Beauty, beauty, you have always been beauty”
― Andrea Gibson

“If a tree fell in the forest, and you were the only one there to hear it; if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?”
― Andrea Gibson

“Cause I don't wanna be a witness to this life,
I want to be charged and convicted,
ear lifted to her song like a bouquet of yes
because my heart is a parachute that has never opened in time
and I wanna fuck up that pattern,
leave a hole where the cold comes in and fill it every day with her sun,
'cause anyone who has ever sat in lotus for more than a few seconds
knows it takes a hell of a lot more muscle to stay than to go”
― Andrea Gibson, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

“..when a war ends, what does that look like exactly?
do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves?
does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?
when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass
and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at
does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold?
yesterday i was told a story
about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old,
who cannot fall asleep
because when she does
she dreams of nothing
but the day she watched her dog
eat her neighbor's corpse.
if you told her war is over
do you think she can sleep?”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase

“But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back.”
― Andrea Gibson

“Remind me that the most fertile lands were built by the fires of volcanoes.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase

“I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside
Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house
But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing”
― Andrea Gibson

“Our insanity is not that we see people who aren’t there. It’s that we ignore the ones who are.”
― Andrea Gibson

“This is for the times you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to.”
― Andrea Gibson, When The Bough Breaks

“We are all instruments pulling the bows across our own lungs. Windmills, still startling in every storm. Have you ever seen a newborn blinking at the light? I wanna do that every day. I wanna know what the kite called itself when it got away, when it escaped into the night...”
― Andrea Gibson

“What I know about living is the pain is never just ours
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo
So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window
When I can see what I couldn’t see before,
through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in
just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better”
― Andrea Gibson

“I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak
But I know now it doesn't matter how well I say grace
if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat
So this is my wheat field
you can have every acre, Love
this is my garden song
this is my fist fight
with that bitter frost
tonight I begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath
the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek
as i sang maybe i need you
off key
but in tune
maybe i need you the way that big moon needs that open sea
maybe i didn't even know i was here til i saw you holding me
give me one room to come home to
give me the palm of your hand
every strand of my hair is a kite string
and I have been blue in the face with your sky
crying a flood over Iowa so you mother will wake to Venice
Lover, I smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chest
now my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered bible
it is the one verse you can trust
so I'm putting all of my words in the collection plate
I am setting the table with bread and grace
my knees are bent
like the corner of a page
I am saving your place”
― Andrea Gibson

“I wanna know what you see
when you look in the mirror

on a day you’re feeling good.

I wanna know what you see
when you look in the mirror

on a day you’re feeling bad.


I wanna know the first person
who taught you your beauty

could ever be reflected
on a lousy piece of glass.”
― Andrea Gibson

“Hey, are you a boy or a — never mind, can I have a push on the swing?” And some day, y’all, when we grow up, it’s all gonna be that simple.”
― Andrea Gibson, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

“If you were to press your heart close up against somebody else’s heart eventually your hearts will start beating at the same time. And two little babies in an incubator, their hearts will beat at the same time. Love that. So if you have somebody in your life that is prone to anxiety, like myself, and if you happen to be a calm person, you could come up and hug me heart to heart and my heart hopefully would slow to yours. And I just love that idea. Or maybe yours would speed up to mine. But either way, we’ll be there together.”
― Andrea Gibson

“When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don’t know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, ‘cause I didn’t want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I’d always find them.”
― Andrea Gibson

“...And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty, the color, the shape of the landscape you’re marching towards. Everyone knows what you’re against; show them what you’re for.”
― Andrea Gibson

“I thought, "The flowers, save the flowers..."

I never thought for a second
we wouldn't save the people”
― Andrea Gibson, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

“Someday we will dare
to trade good for true”
― Andrea Gibson

“I am whoever I am when I am it.”
― Andrea Gibson

“We were the letters sent to the wrong address,
but opened anyway.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase

“I started wishing on the stars in the sky instead.
I said to the sun, tell me about the big bang.
The sun said, ‘It hurts to become.”
― Andrea Gibson

“It's turning the thunder into grace,
knowing sometimes the break in your heart
is like the hole in the flute.

Sometimes it's the place
where the music comes through.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase

“Some days my heart beats so fast
my ribcage sounds like a fucking railroad track
and my breath is a train I just can't catch.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase

“You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy. I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside. Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside.”
― Andrea Gibson

“They're telling you to blend in,
like you've never seen how a blender works,
like they think you've never seen the mess from the blade.”
― Andrea Gibson

“Picasso said he'd paint with his own wet tongue
on the dusty floor of a jail cell if he had to.

We have to create.
It is the only thing louder than destruction.
It's the only chance the bard are gonna break,
our hands full of color
reaching towards the sky,
a brush stroke in the dark.

It is not too late.
That starry night
is not yet dry.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase