What can you know about a person? They shift
in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. Add
a second light and you get a second darkness”
— Richard Siken, “Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light”, War of the Foxes
Tag: Quote
Nothing New Under the Sun
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
— Ecclesiastes 1:9, New International Version
John Steinbeck
I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
Walt Whitman
Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse
unanswerable questions,
Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?
What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender
directions and indirections?”
— Walt Whitman, “Myself and Me”, On the Beach at Night Alone
Joan Didion
Bring a Sledgehammer
People put up a lot of walls. Bring a sledgehammer to your life.”
— Westworld, S3E2: “The Winter Line“, HBO
Walt Whitman
I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but
listen to my enemies, as I myself do,
I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I
cannot expound myself,
I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.”
— Walt Whitman, “Myself and Me”, On the Beach at Night Alone
Joan Didion
To make an omelette, you need not only those broken eggs but someone ‘oppressed’ to break them.”
— Joan Didion, The Women’s Movement
Tortoise
Oh, you do me wrong. Would I do anything wicked? I’m a peaceful soul, bothering nobody and leading a gentle, herbivorous life. And my thoughts merely drift among the oddities and quarks of how things are (as I see them). I, humble observer of phenomena, plod along and puff my silly words into the air rather unspectacularly, I am afraid.”
— Tortoise, Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
Frank O’Hara
In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.”
— Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency (via Existential Sheddings)
Lisa Marie Blair 