“I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.
I will constitute the field.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“...whatever/ returns from oblivion/ returns to find a voice.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing...”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“the powerful are always lied to since the weak are always driven to panic”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“End of Winter”
Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.
You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?
Plunging ahead
into the dark and light at the same time
eager for sensation
as though you were some new thing, wanting
to express yourselves
all brilliance, all vivacity
never thinking
this would cost you anything,
never imagining the sound of my voice
as anything but part of you—
you won’t hear it in the other world,
not clearly again,
not in birdcall or human cry,
not the clear sound, only
persistent echoing
in all sound that means good-bye, good-bye—
the one continuous line
that binds us to each other.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“Remember that time you made the wish?
I make a lot of wishes.
The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.
What do you think I wished for?
I don't know. That I'd come back,
that we'd somehow be together in the end.
I wished for what I always wish for.
I wished for another poem.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
Louise Glück
Born place: in New York City, The United States
Born date April 22, 1943
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“I stood before a mirror and said fearfully: “I want to see how I look in the mirror with my eyes closed.”
These wrods of Richter’s, when I first came upon them, made an indescribable commotion in me. As did the following, which seems almost like a corollary of the above—from Novalis:
The seat of the soul is where inner world and outer world touch each other. For nobody knows himself, if he is only himself and not also another one at the same time.
To take possession of one’s transcendental I, to be the I of one’s I, at the same time, as Novalis expressed it again.”
― Henry Miller, quote from Sexus
“What sort of mother talks about whores on her deathbed? Your mother wouldn’t do that, would she?"
"I have no idea,” Grey said, “The situation has fortunately not arisen.”
― Diana Gabaldon, quote from Lord John and the Private Matter
“You're going to find Tigerstar. Against that fiend, every cat is helpless.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Fading Echoes
“Still, though reading absorbed her, what the Queen had not expected was the degree to which it drained her of enthusiasm for anything else.”
― Alan Bennett, quote from The Uncommon Reader
“There is no need to tell someone how to do his job if you have properly trained your team”
― Dick Winters, quote from Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters
Hamlet
A Great and Terrible...
Wizard's First Rule
Perfect Chemistry
Chocolat
Cry, the Beloved Cou...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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