Amelia > Amelia's Quotes

“THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. We are here to help you.
2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings.
3. The dress code will be enforced.
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with you in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.

TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. You will use algebra in your adult lives.
2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away.
3. Students must stay on campus during lunch.
4. The new text books will arrive any day now.
5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores.
6. We are enforcing the dress code.
7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon.
8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals.
9. There is nothing wrong with summer school.
10. We want to hear what you have to say.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“I ask birds what they know: I sing to discover the rude unboundedness of space, and to unite myself with it.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“In those days we weren’t always singular, but rode the sea of consciousness like bubbles overlapped.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“I don’t believe we can save our civilization; I do, I do believe it. I don’t want this poem to be beautiful. I do. I have no skills; I have no hope; I don’t want any hope. I simply want to sit here, in this calm. I don’t want the electricity to fail. I don’t want war to come here. I DON’T WANT WAR TO COME HERE! I sat beneath the tree for a while. There was only one tree left. Here it is pouring rain. The two men are in a contest to take over the world. They will be voted for to make it seem as if this is what we want. Don’t ever speak to me from ecstasy, my life is broken. Tell me what style you like though,”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“I’m not interested in style or syntax or vocabulary. But I am.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“I wanted him to love me, but then that wasn’t enough. We gave ourselves to each other, but then we had done that. Which one of us was more? He was always more. I am the desire you want to have, so you can feel yourself continuously inside the line of desiring unwinding against the horizon leading to infinite nowhere.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“marabout.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“We hate the ones who are spontaneously different, as if what they loved accused us of unhappiness.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“We step on the fragile thread of our way, going about with no other explanation but givenness: this is our gift, but who or what can have given it to us except for us?”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“arras”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“mesclun.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“puling”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“You think you support me— coins, even government checks: I support you, making sure the world’s observed”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“You think you support me— coins, even government checks: I support you, making sure the world’s observed for what it is, so it can go on. I can’t do it alone much longer. I’m beginning to hate you, and that’s bad for me. I had to stop drinking, I’d become too angry. When I slept I was indignant, I didn’t em- brace the universe’s motions so it could keep moving within its own self.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“Scrawls of essence.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“I have a diploma in long breath.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“Can’t you forget him? Not for a day, he’s over me, but no one knows who I am. Love is never appeased if she’s repressed, comes from beyond the ocean, causing adults to transform from the mild sheep of the city, into crazy changelings. For my love I would not follow rules of his bored marketplace. This is an ancient history. People fell in love once more. They forgot to eat, to make money, and they never voted. They only cried out to me, Love. They had forgotten so long now they couldn’t move without me. Garlanded with hyacinths.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“Don’t take my voice apart with names. Love is a liquid force.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“All the evil that concerns us, as women suffer always, without knowing the difference between their lot and the good, all that evil happens to me, but so understatedly. There are times when the air itself seems a concentration camp for us but not for them, though it’s the same air it isn’t same if you’re always servile walking, sexed walking or with some name you never asked for, he beat me. That’s a cliché isn’t it? He asked me to give up my show. Told me I knew nothing large in the same useful way as he, but I could be a symbol. At some future date, I would be allowed to excel at style. Reflecting the light faint I wept. He said I was different from men, without mathematical talent you can’t lead us.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“What is it that you want? I want to know things and to love.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“Beauty’s what I want now. I look for it within and without my- self, when I feel serene that’s beautiful, when I see forsythias, when someone reads poems I exist to be the one who’s feeling it. It isn’t for me in- dividually, I am the universe as senses for beauty, or as beauty; no need for forgiveness, drama, or oppression— watch lights appear through the trees at evening while your daddy cleans fish. It’s all that’s left, only in memory as I’m you, the voice who remembers me, there used to be a world.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“haven’t known what I’ve felt since those cons started selling me feelings.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“I’m smart as a professor in that I’m alive, remaining so without tenure or fellowship: I’m a fellow and credible within myself, the one who cares—”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“Well it’s still Christmas and someone gave me a theory of economic recovery. I didn’t want one, I wanted a bird call whistle.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“the flow of grace, flow of the small ways we love within a life that’s difficult—”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“By default, since there’s no one else here I am your soul. what you know in this place. But we’re dead or you’re dead; I can’t be— I am your manuscript speaking. the only woman in town.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“part of our nature baby”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“But I, the page, know what a witch is and am one being both a possessor of “natural” power and a medium of transformation”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“IF THE REAL IS SO REAL WHY ISN’T IT I tried to learn how to be a person in order to be a poet. but I failed, or I was failed.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts