Jane Quotes

“As if keening on your knees
were somehow obscene

As if there were a control
so marvelous

you could teach it
to eat pain.”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“How people are often merciless
on those they love the most”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“Treating things lightly is indeed the answer to so much.”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“I seem only happy when I’m eating or reading.”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“I invent her, then, as a woman emerging from the sea.
A tall man meets here on the black sand.
You’ve come back, he says.
Can barely see her in the sea-light.
They make love there, and become horses.
As night grows black they become weeds”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“She asks him quietly in the dark to tell her about the mother of everything and he did not know of whom she was speaking.
She asked the volcano and the volcano belched great streams of wet ash.
She lay her head down with fatigue and found her head on a pillow of ink.
Upon waking she stretched her arms around the glob and found her fingers weren’t even close to touching.”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“My relatives all say
Jane wanted to change the world

Then they add
None of us can”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“It’s too late to help her; my mother wakes with a start. It’s too late to help her, but the want still cripples the heart.”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“[Jane's journal]

(1966)

Questioning is healthy - opinions that are unstable are great.
Pseudo-certainty is the worst crime. Nothing is absolute.
No one has all the answers. Pretense is hideous.

This whole essay is a bunch of crap.”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder

“not even Kali
with her mouth full of blood
nor Thor with his hammer
can take me away from here, where
your breath spouts out of you
and I listen.”
― Maggie Nelson, Jane: A Murder