“O love, how did you get here?
--Nick and the Candlestick”
“There is more than one good way to drown.”
“I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up
and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)”
“The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.”
“Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.”
“Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.”
“Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.”
“I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.”
“the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns”
“The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.”
“You inherit white heather, a bee's wing,
Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness.”
“Through the mind like an oyster labors on and on, / A grain of sand is all we have”
“But it is the mark of a leader, to hold all possibilities, even the unpleasant—even the unthinkable.”
“The popular antidepressant Prozac, which acts by blocking the reuptake of serotonin and probably increasing its availability, has received wide attention; the notion that low serotonin levels might be correlated with a tendency towards violence has surfaced in the popular press. The problem is that it is not the absence or low amount of serotonin per se that "causes" a certain manifestation. Serotonin is part of an exceedingly complicated mechanism which operates at the level of molecules, synapses, local circuits and systems, and in which sociocultural factors, past and present, also intervene powerfully. A satisfactory explanation can arise only from a more comprehensive view of the entire process, in which the relevant variables of a specific problem, such as depression or social adaptability, are analyzed in detail.”
“If it were not so, why all the need for secret societies? If we are ruled by an open system run by democratically elected officials, why the need for a secret Masonic order in every village, town and city across the United States?”
“(I) want to do everything and see everything, sense everything and feel everything and taste everything; to know that life is an enormous experience and must be used. To be in the world, and of the world, and never to stand aside and watch.”
“It’s the beginning of wisdom when you admit you’ve gone astray.”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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