Scars and Stars Quotes

“This is why I never judge someone who is trying to reconnect. We are all just trying to grab anything to find ourselves, even greasy feathers at Rotten Ronnies.”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“But I also heard how Achilles had this cool shield made by the god Hephaestus and that it had hammered into its golden face all of the ancient world’s wonders—feasts, civilization, the polis, great battles, palaces, mountains, all the animals, Earth, Sun, the heavens and stars, vineyards, oceans, and everything else in existence. It had everything but poetry. Poetry, the legend said, was left out purposefully, for poetry had the power to make the world anew, to conjure up all of creation. Poetry was the shield itself.”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“Scars can be beautiful or ugly; it’s just how you look at them.

They adorn our skin, tell us where we’ve been, and all
we’ve survived.”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“Have courage, dear grandson,' you said, your eyes meeting mine,
'we'll beat this cancer yet.'
Many years after it took you,
a part of me still thinks you can beat it.
A part of me knows that you did.”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“People often ask me how I survived to achieve such greatness (And by greatness I simply meant to be better than one was yesterday), and I have avoided sharing my shield until this very moment.

But this was how.

And now I gif you the fallen warrior's shield (even though you always had it), so you, too, can write your own poetry like I have done, and so you, too, can overcome and be who you are supposed to be.”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“Love is shit, cleaning other's shit is love.”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“All of it is worth it --
to be someone's ancestor.
To see the generations across her face
through the life, the body, of this tiny little girl before me”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“I learned that you've got to do your best in whatever you do, even if it's smashing potatoes and washing dishes, and even if you job leaves you stinking like a giant rotten potato and you look like a lopsided sea crustacean after a while, because every chance you get in life deserves respect, and so do the people who took chances on you”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems

“The granduer of life is apparent in all the little details.”
― Jesse Thistle, Scars and Stars: Poems