Adrienne Rich · 358 pages
Rating: (2.8K votes)
“Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984
“I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984
“A language is a map of our failures”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984
“We lie under the sheet
after making love, speaking
of loneliness
relieved in a book
relived in a book
so on that page
the clot and fissure
of it appears
words of a man
in pain
a naked word
entering the clot
a hand grasping
through bars:
deliverance
What happens between us
has happened for centuries
we know it from literature
still it happens
sexual jealousy
outflung hand
beating bed
dryness of mouth
after panting
there are books that describe all this
and they are useless”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984
“A dream of tenderness
wrestles with all I know of history”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984
“Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poet’s blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the head by Dr Samuel Johnson; and Johnson when a child had been taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula, the King’s evil; and Queen Anne when a child...”
― Robert Graves, quote from Goodbye to All That
“She had power over the most magnificent forces on Earth, but she still didn’t feel like she had power over the most important thing of all—her own heart.”
― Josephine Angelini, quote from Goddess
“I'm an angel not a frickin' saint.”
― J.R. Ward, quote from Covet
“The autopilot is a hands-free piece of electronic wizardry. It's not some brutal application of electricity like one of the Pubyok's car batteries...Think of its probing as a conversation with the mind, imagine it in a dance with identity. Yes, picture a pencil and eraser engaged in a beautiful dance across the page. The pencil's tip bursts with expression - squiggles, figures, words - filling the page, as the eraser measures, takes note, follows in the pencil's footsteps, leaving only blankness in its wake. The pencil's next seizure of scribbles is perhaps more intense and desperate, but shorter lived, and the eraser follows again. They continue in lockstep this way, the self and the state, coming closer to one another until finally the pencil and the eraser are almost one, moving in sympathy, the line disappearing even as it's laid down, the words unwritten before the letters are formed, and finally there is only white.”
― Adam Johnson, quote from The Orphan Master's Son
“Something was beyond wrong. Sebeck looked at the faces of the agents and police arrayed around him. There was abject hatred in their eyes. Burning anger. He knew that look. It was the look reserved for the vilest criminals. They were closing in from two directions—leaving a clear field of fire. Twenty or thirty heavily armed men. Sebeck glanced at Ross, who already had his hands on his head. “What the hell is going on, Jon?” “I don’t know. But the Daemon’s got something to do with it.” “This is your last warning! Put your hands on your head, or we will open fire!” Sebeck felt his blood rising. He put his hands on the back of his head but looked to Ross. “Why are they looking at me?” “I don’t know.” The Feds hit Sebeck like linebackers. They”
― Daniel Suarez, quote from Daemon
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