Sam > Sam's Quotes

“Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I'm not so sure I want to return the favor.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing, but he thought perhaps he liked it.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Foxhole Court

“Neil thought about Renee's bruised knuckles, Dan's fierce spirit, and Allison holding her ground on the court a week after Seth's death. He thought about his mother standing unflinching in the face of his father's violent anger and her ruthlessly leaving bodies in their wake. He felt compelled to say, "Some of the strongest people I've known are women.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Raven King

“University, he said quietly. It sounded like a dream; it tasted like damnation.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Foxhole Court

“I didn’t know you could get buried in your own silence.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time.” Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“(Self Portrait: Boy Remakes World Before World Remakes Boy)”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion-‘
‘I don’t, ‘ She said. ‘I have my own.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
― E. E. Cummings

“listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go”
― E.E. Cummings

“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”
― Margaret Atwood

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
― Robert Frost

“Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
― W.S. Merwin

“Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”
― E.E. Cummings

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
― T.S. Eliot

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
― W.H. Auden, The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume II: 1939-1948

“What can be explained is not poetry.”
― W.B. Yeats

“Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.”
― Robert Frost, West-Running Brook

“We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Each person has a literature inside them.”
― Anna Deavere Smith

“Every hour wounds. The last one kills.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table ....”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”
― W.H. Auden, New Year Letter