The World Doesn't End Quotes

“If the sky falls they shall have clouds for supper.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems

“I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine… While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you’re making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might’ve thrown them out with last spring’s cleaning.

It’s snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“MY SECRET IDENTITY IS

The room is empty,
And the window is open”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Never since the beginning of the world has there been so little light. Our winter afternoons have been known at times to last a hundred years.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End: A Pulitzer Prize Winner

“يخطو الميت نازلا من على المقصلة. يحمل تحت ذراعه رأسه الذبيح.
شجر التفاح مُزهر. والميت يشق طريقه إلى حانة القرية والجميع يشاهدون. هنالك يسحب كرسياً ويجلس جنب منضدة ويطلب زجاجتي بيرة, واحدةً له وواحدةً لرأسه. تمسح أمي يديها في المريلة وتقوم على خدمته.
ما أشد الهدوء في العالم. يمكن للمرء أن يسمع النهر, الذي أحيانا ما ينسى في غمرة ارتباكه, ويجري إلى الوراء”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Are Russian cannibals worse than the English? Of course. The English eat only the feet, the Russians the soul. "The soul is a mirage," I told Anna Alexandrovna, but she went on eating mine anyway.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Dear Friedrich, the world's still false, cruel and beautiful...”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“The stone is a mirror which works poorly. Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dimness, who's to say? In the hush your heart sounds like a black cricket.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“I remember,” someone said, “how in ancient times one could turn a wolf into a human and then lecture it to one's heart's content.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“كنتُ قد غفوتُ في الظل، ورحتُ أحلم أن الأشجار بحفيف أوراقها هي ذواتي العديدة تتكلم كلها في ذات الوقت لتشرح نفسها حتى أنني لم أتبين كلمة واحدة من كلامها. لقد كانت حياتي لغزًا جميلًا دائمًا على وشك أن يُحل، دائمًا على وشك!”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“في كل الأماكن تركت أجزاءً من نفسي كما يترك أناس شاردو الذهن قفازاتهم ومظلاتهم بألوانها شديدة الحزن من فرط ما عانت من سوء الحظ”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Once I knew, then I forgot. It was as if I had fallen asleep in a field only to discover at waking that a grove of trees had grown up around me.
“Doubt nothing, believe everything,” was my friend’s idea of metaphysics, although his brother ran away with his wife. He still bought her a rose every day, sat in the empty house for the next twenty years talking to her about the weather.
I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!
My friend’s empty house with every one of its windows lit. The dark trees multiplying all around it.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“My mother was a braid of black smoke. She bore me swaddled over the burning cities. The sky was a vast and windy place for a child to play. We met many others who were just like us. They were trying to put on their overcoats with arms made of smoke. The high heavens were full of little shrunken deaf ears instead of stars.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Time—the lizard in the sunlight. It doesn't move, but its eyes are wide open.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“In the dark to see, you ass-scratchers! In the dark to see.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Time—the lizard in the sunlight. It doesn't move, but its eyes are wide open. They love to gaze into our faces and hearken to our discourse. It's because the very first men were lizards. If you don't believe me, go grab one by the tail and see it come right off.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End: A Pulitzer Prize Winner

“I love America," he'd tell us. We were going to make a million dollars manufacturing objects we had seen in dreams that night.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End

“Not the least charm of this tableau is that it can be so easily dismissed as preposterous.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End