“Suddenly, I could see it all so vividly: the cruelty and inhumanity of self-righteous people, who like to think that they're saints, pure as the driven snow.”
― Costas Taktsis, quote from The Third Wedding
“You really liked having him in jail, like people who shut birds up in cages on the excuse that they're protecting them from their enemies.”
― Costas Taktsis, quote from The Third Wedding
“Before it began to open new wounds, the war healed quite a few old ones: it shook us out of our lethargy, our life took on new meaning, we no longer lived without a purpose, eating and sleeping and excreting like animals.”
― Costas Taktsis, quote from The Third Wedding
“Do you really think it's behaving like a Christian to be glad when you see death and ruin falling on your fellow men? Is that what Christ taught us?”
― Costas Taktsis, quote from The Third Wedding
“Hecuba had the mistaken notion, just like my poor mama, that all a girl had to do was to get married and all her problems were solved overnight.”
― Costas Taktsis, quote from The Third Wedding
Costas Taktsis
Born place: in Thessaloniki, Greece
Born date October 8, 1927
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“No. I’m not hot, and I don’t want to do the Squeaky Dance.” Simon sighed. This day was full of disappointments.”
― Anne Bishop, quote from Marked in Flesh
“What is our life: (Pause.) it’s looking forward or it’s looking back. And that’s our life. That’s it. Where is the moment?”
― David Mamet, quote from Glengarry Glen Ross
“ما جدوى السفر حول العالم لرؤية ما يكمن أصلا في قرارة النفس ؟”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from Balthasar's Odyssey
“Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes
First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.
Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.
You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.
The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.
Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything—
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.
What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.
So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset
and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.”
― Billy Collins, quote from Picnic, Lightning
“There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.”
― Erica Jong, quote from Fear of Flying
Tell Me Three Things
The Female Man
Dog Soldiers
Dance of the Happy S...
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