Ann > Ann's Quotes

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”
― Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
― W.H. Auden, Another Time

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“And I know now that all the time I was trying to get
out of the dust,
the fact is,
what I am,
I am because of the dust.
And what I am is good enough.
Even for me.”
― Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

“My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”
― Margaret Atwood

“You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye”
― Margaret Atwood

“I don't know what's worse. Being mistreated because of the color of your skin, your size, or having to prove that it really happened.”
― Renée Watson, Piecing Me Together

“I wonder if it is exhausting
to be a tree.
To lose something,
year after year,
only to trust that it will
someday grow back" -Jude”
― Jasmine Warga, Other Words for Home

“Hoping,
I’m starting to think,
might be the bravest thing a person can do.”
― Jasmine Warga, Other Words for Home

“At North Farm"

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?”
― John Ashbery, A Wave