Barbara > Barbara's Quotes

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.”
― Diane Wakoski

“If you imagine, friend, that I do not have those
black serpents in the pit of my body,
that I am not crushed in fragments by the tough
butterfly wing
broken and crumpled like a black silk stocking,
if you imagine that my body is not
blackened
burned wood,
then you imagine a false woman.”
― Diane Wakoski

“Sour Milk

You can't make it
turn sweet
again.
Once
it was an innocent color
like the flowers of wild strawberries,
and its texture was simple
would pass through a clean cheesecloth,
its taste was fresh.
And now
with nothing more guilty that the passage of time
to chide it with,
the same substance
has turned sour and lumpy.

The sour milk
makes interesting & delicious doughs,
can be carried to a further state of bacterial action
to create new foods,
can in its own right
be considered complicated and more interesting in texture
to one who studies it closely,
like a map of the world.

But
to most of us:
it is spoiled.
Sour.
We throw it out,
down the drain-not in the backyard-
careful not to spill any
because the smell is strong.
A good cook
would be shocked
with the waste.
But we do not live in a world of good cooks.

I am the milk.
Time passes.
You cannot make it
turn sweet
again.
I sit guiltily on the refrigerator shelf
trembling with hope for a cook
who dreams of waffles,
biscuits, dumplings
and other delicious breads
fearing the modern housewife
who will lift me off the shelf and with one deft twist
of a wrist...
you know the rest.

You are the milk.
When it is your turn
remember,
there is nothing more than the passage of time
we can chide you with.”
― Diane Wakoski, Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987

“When I am dead, even then,
I will still love you, I will wait in these poems,
When I am dead, even then
I am still listening to you.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."

("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Who are you then?"
"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“You never walk alone. Even the devil is the lord of flies.”
― Gilles Deleuze

“I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“I am quite sure I am more afraid of people who are themselves terrified of the devil than I am of the devil himself.”
― Santa Teresa de Jesús, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself

“When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”
― William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience