FEAR KILLS MORE PEOPLE THAN DEATTH. GEORGE S. PATTON
A DIET COUNSELOR once told me that all overweight people are angry with their mothers and channel their frustrations into overeating. WENDY WASSERSTEIN
He said, “One life on this earth is all we get, whether it is enough or not enough & the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully & bravely and beautifully as we can. FREDERICK BUECHNER
SUCCESS—-RALPH WALDO EMERSON
TO LAUGH often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
ALL the knowledge that is not of the senses, not of the intellect, not of the heart but is the property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspect of your being . . . the knowledge of your spirit. GREGOR. “The High Masters”
THE PICTURES were painted directly through me without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke. HILMA OF KLINT
PHILIP LEVINE. 1928-2015. “The Simple Truth: Poems”. “Breath: Poems”
YOUR HAVE TO FOLLOW WHERE THE POEM LEADS. And it will surprise you. It will say things you don’t expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize. ‘That is truly what I felt.’ That is truly what I saw.
YOU HAVE BEGUN TO SEPARATE THE DARK FROM THE DARK.
I STILL BELIEVE IN THIS COUNTRY, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake & Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.
MY EARLIEST POEMS were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself.
I REALIZED poetry’s the thing that I can do cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.
HOW WEIGHTLESS/ WORDS ARE WHEN NOTHING WILL DO.
THERE’LL always be working people in my poems because because I grew up with them and I am a poet of memory.
NO ONE CAN WRITE LIKE VALLEJO and not sound like a fraud. He’s just too much himself and not you.
I’M AFRAID we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from others.