“I am living. I remember you.”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“WHAT THE LIVING DO
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through
the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,
I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you. ”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“Anything I’ve ever tried to keep by force I’ve lost.”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“the bridge appears when you walk across it—that”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“Soon I will die, he said, and then what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened, and then everyone can rest.”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“I had no idea that the gate I would step through to finally enter this world would be the space my brother’s body made.”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk down a sidewalk without looking back.”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now she would never come into my arms without believing that I wanted something.”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
Marie Howe
Born place: in Rochester, New York, The United States
Born date January 1, 1950
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“God won’t protect you from what He can perfect you through.”
― Kevin Alan Milne, quote from The One Good Thing
“Lucy nodded dutifully, all the while making a mental list of all the places she would rather be. Paris, Venice, Greece, although weren’t they at war? No matter. She would still rather be in Greece.
(On the Way to the Wedding, Bridgertons #8, by Julia Quinn)”
― Julia Quinn, quote from On the Way to the Wedding
“I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
or only when the sunsets fade
be mourned secretly in my thought?
All is for you: the daily prayer,
the sleepless heat at night,
and of my verses, the white
flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.
No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
me more, not
even the one who betrayed me to torture,
not even the one who caressed me and forgot.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems
“The scientist in me worries that my happiness is nothing more than a symptom of bipolar disease, hypergraphia from a postpartum disorder. The rest of me thinks that artificially splitting off the scientist in me from the writer in me is actually a kind of cultural bipolar disorder, one that too many of us have. The scientist asks how I can call my writing vocation and not addiction. I no longer see why I should have to make that distinction. I am addicted to breathing in the same way. I write because when I don’t, it is suffocating. I write because something much larger than myself comes into me that suffuses the page, the world, with meaning. Although I constantly fear that what I am writing teeters at the edge of being false, this force that drives me cannot be anything but real, or nothing will ever be real for me again.”
― quote from The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
“What did he say about me?” Tom demanded.
“You don’t want to know.”
“You’re right.”
“Told you,” Prophet said, looking quite pleased with himself. “Don’t say I never tell you anything.”
― S.E. Jakes, quote from Long Time Gone
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