The Offing Quotes

“Krieg ist Krieg: Er wird von wenigen angezettelt und von vielen gefuehrt, und am Ende verlieren alle.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“And after all there are only a few things truly worth fighting for: freedom, of course, and all that it brings with it. Poetry, perhaps, and a good glass of wine. A nice meal. Nature. Love, if you're lucky. And that's about it.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“Travel is a search for the self . . . and sometimes just to search is enough. [. . .] Wander around long enough with your eyes open and soon enough you'll find things. Great journeys are never about the destination.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“Trust me when I say that everything you've ever felt has been experienced by another human being before you. You may not think so, but its true.

That is what poetry is. It exists to remind us of this very fact. Poetry is mankind's way of saying that we are not entirely alone in the world; it offers a voice of comfort to resonate down through the ages like a lone foghorn's mournful call in the nautical night. Poetry is a stepladder between the centuries, from ancient Greece to tomorrow afternoon. Your problem is you just haven't been introduced to the pure poets - those who hit the head and the heart. The masters. But luckily for you, you have pitched at the right place. I'd say it is almost as if it were fate, if I could bring myself to believe in such an ethereal concept.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“When the bread had been eaten, and we had each had an apple, and the teapot had been drained so that all hat was left was a wadded clot of nettle leaves sitting in some dirty green residue, Dulcie leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

'Thank you for the lack of conversation. Silence is indeed golden.'

'You're welcome,' I said.

'You don't say much, and I like that. There is poetry in silence but most don't stop to hear it. They just talk, talk, talk, but say nothing because they are afraid of hearing their own heartbeat. Afraid of their own mortality.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“Romantik ist naemlich nicht gleichbedeutend mit Herzschmerz und Rosen. Romantik ist Gefuehl, und Romantik ist Freiheit. Romantik ist Abenteuer und Natur und Wanderlust. Sie ist Meeresrauschen und der Regen auf deiner Zeltplane und ein Bussard hoch ueber einer Wiese und das morgendliche Erwachen mit der Frage, was der Tag wohl bringen mag, um dann loszuziehen und es herauszufinden. Das ist Romantik.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“I was neither old enough to have made myself a heron young enough to have escaped the newsreel images or the long dark shadows that the returning soldiers dragged behind them like empty coffins. For no one ever really wins a war: some just lose a little less than others.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“At times like this, or when hoeing soil or sanding wood, or just sitting on a bench with my face turned to the sun, I appeared to slip out of the moment so entirely - or, conversely, perhaps was so deeply immersed in the here and now - that I forgot who I was. The slate of self was wiped.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“For no one ever really wins a war: some just lose a little less than others”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“I've just remembered we're lacking clotted cream. Scones without proper cream is a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“Presented incorrectly and out of context it will put you off for life, but a good poem shucks the oyster shell of one's mind to reveal the pearl within. It gives words to those feelings whose definitions are forever beyond the reach of verbal articulation.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“War was an illness in a way, treatable only by the passing of time, and many were stricken until the end of their days.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“These are the men who become our bank managers, financiers and politicians power-drunk on their own sense of entitlement.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“approaching the turning season of smoke and decay, of nest-building and leaves curling....the lifting winds now brought autumn’s advance party. We had entered the dying days. The first sighted robin landed on the cabin’s windowsill and cocked a curious head at me. “.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“I've seen enough of it at close quarters to know that fame, renown, notoriety - call it what you will - well, it's nothing but a curse that breeds misery. Especially to those of a creative or artistic bent.

For many years I have observed that the truly talented are invariably the most sensitive, and the public arena, where artifice is all that really matters, is no place for poets, and furthermore the critics, most of whom don't know their bumholes from their earlobes when it comes to the written word, think everyone - private life and all - is fair game. Yes, the public arena is no place for those of, shall we say, a sensitive disposition.

No poet should be famous - only read.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“We’ve got more than our fair share of Bible-thumpers round here as it is. The old joyless fire-and-brimstone-and-two-fucks-a-lifetime Christian lot.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“They occupied no-man's-land between adolescence and adulthood, where insecurity and innocence, joy and world-weary cynicism do battle, where different masks are tried on for size”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing

“I took another swig and felt the wine in my veins as a pleasant ache”
― Benjamin Myers, The Offing