Letters To Lorca Quotes

Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!" What does one do with all this crap? ~ Jack Spicer

Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to.
~ Jack Spicer

Just because you're breathing, doesn't mean you're alive. ~ Carew Papritz

I glare at him and sigh. "Don't you understand what a book is?"
"Obviously."
"Then how can it be boring? It's not just twenty-six little letters all mushed together to make words that link together to tell a story. It's the creation of another world where anything can happen and anyone can be whoever they want to be. It's a crazy, special kind of magic that can transport you out of the real world, to anywhere you want to go. It doesn't matter if it's a made-up universe or it's written in a city you can drive to within an hour. It's what happens within the pages that makes reading so...not boring."

-Emma Hart "Dirty Little Rendezvous (The Burke Brothers Spin-Off #1). ~ Emma Hart

Somewhere here there's important information I absolutely need," Tavius said. "But it's hard for anyone else to sort out what I should know about. So I read a lot of letters and petitions myself. I could spend all day every day just reading my mail. ~ Phyllis T. Smith

John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing
like a faery breath!
upon the glass. ~ Edward Abbey

A is for Alibi, my first book, was published in 1982. As it happened the next couple of books took place in June and August of that year. Without meaning to I painted myself into a corner. The other issue was the aging process. I did not want my main character to age one year for every book so I slowed the whole process down. This way I could get through all 26 letters of the alphabet without making her 109 years old in 2015. I might end the series in either 1990 or on New Years Eve 1989. ~ Sue Grafton

But I have never ceased to think of that girl. I have written to her, but I can not direct the epistle because her name is one of those nine-jointed Russian affairs, and there are not letters enough in our alphabet to hold out. I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when I am awake, but I make a stagger at it in my dreams, ~ Mark Twain

Get someone-anyone-to read books to you. Having books read to you at any age is the supremo ultimato of living. ~ Carew Papritz

We're all meant to lean on something. Or someone.' I smile. He frowns. He surprises me and grabs the pen out of my hand. He starts writing something down in his neat block letters. He slides the journal back to me. 'I build walls around myself. I lean on those.' I don't need to ask him why. Everybody builds walls - it's for protection. I scribble quickly. 'Maybe you should break the walls down once in a while.' 'I'll just build them up again', he writes. 'But maybe you'll add a few windows the next time around. Or a door? ~ Katie Kacvinsky

Speaking of scents, if Mr. Cologne-laced Letters really wants to stalk me, he'd be wise to follow me here, maybe offer to buy me a new release. That would get him a lot more action than his current bi-polar approach. ~ Angela Graham

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. ~ Mark Twain

I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I need you, Mel. I need you way too much as a friend to risk it. I know I've done a truly shitty job trying to communicate with you about this, but if you had any idea how important you are to me ... Christ, you're one of the few things that kept me sane inside. Thinking about you, getting your letters. We gotta find a way, babe. We can't do this. ~ Joanna Wylde

I have absorbed into myself my own eleven years there not as something shameful nor as a nightmare to be cursed: I have come almost to love that monstrous world, and now, by a happy turn of events, I have also been entrusted with many recent reports and letters. So perhaps I shall be able to give some account of the bones and flesh of that salamander - which, incidentally, is still alive ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, i remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the grand canyon for the flying-saucer people to find was this:
WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT,
BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP.
only he didn't say doggone. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I have a serious affliction: loving you forever.

[Letter to Arline Feynman] ~ Richard Feynman

Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God's essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it? ~ Reza Aslan

You know why I am here? asked the headmaster.
Swaminathan searched for an answer: the headmaster might be there to receive letters from boy's parents; he might be there to flay Ebenzars alive; he might be there to deliver six cuts with his cane every Monday at twelve o'clock. And above all why this question? ~ R.K. Narayan

Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms - such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier - or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of 2 styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. Source: Wikipedia ~ Jonathan Swift

The imagination is also sometimes commended for offering us in vicarious form experiences which we are unable to enjoy at first hand. If you can't afford an air ticket to Kuala Lumpur, you can always read Conrad and imagine yourself in South-East Asia. If you have been monotonously married for forty years, you can always lay furtive hands on a copy of James Joyce's letters. Literature on this view is a kind of supplement to our unavoidably impoverished lives - a sort of spiritual prosthesis which extends our capabilities beyond their normal restricted range. It is true that everyone's experience is bound to be limited, and that art can valuably augment it. But why the lives of so many people should be imaginatively impoverished is then a question that can be easily passed over. ~ Terry Eagleton

I write with the entire alphabet, not just the popular letters.
Readers don't want to lose themselves in the text. They want to find themselves in it. ~ Mark R. Trost

Oh," said her husband, sounding deeply pleased at something he'd read in his letter.
"What?" Bridget sat up, inadvertently spilling several drops of honey on her breast.
Sadly, she succumbed to her husband's fondness for nudity soon after their marriage.
Valentine glanced up, but his gaze was immediately drawn to the honey slowly dripping down her breast.
"Val..." Bridget moved to scoop the honey up with her finger.
His hand darted out, catching hers.
"Oh, don't," he breathed, leaning over her, forcing her flat on her back.
He bent, closing his azure eyes, and licked her breast almost reverently.
She shuddered.
"It's the middle of the day," she whispered.
His eyes opened, wicked and amused. "I know. Your favorite."
She smiled up at him, threading her fingers through his golden hair. "I love you."
"And I love you," he murmured against her lips, before taking her mouth hard and possessively.
Their letters fell to the floor, abandoned, but Bridget didn't care at all.
She was with her true love and the world outside could wait. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

It was '86. We were a big enough name and we had enough cache that MTV wanted to play us, so, along with Michael Jackson and Madonna, they played our upside-down, black-and-white, backward, single unedited footage of a rock quarry with orange letters over the top of it and called it art. ~ Michael Stipe

About a week after they had come back, a load of mail came to the island. They were the first letters the men had received in several weeks, and for a night it relieved the changeless pattern of their lives. One of the infrequent rations of beer was given out the same night, and the men finished their three cans quickly, and sat about without saying very much. The beer had been far too inadequate to make them drunk; it made them only moody and reflective, it opened the gate to all their memories, and left them sad, hungering for things they could not name. ~ Norman Mailer

There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition. ~ Barbara Mertz

She remembers her name. She remembers the name of the president. She remembers the name of the president's dog. She remembers what city she lives in. And on which street. And in which house. The one with the big olive tree where the road takes a turn. She remembers what year it is. She remembers the season. She remembers the day on which you were born. She remembers the daughter who was born before you – She had your father's nose, that was the first thing I noticed about her – but she does not remember that daughter's name. She remembers the name of the man she did not marry – Frank – and she keeps his letters in a drawer by her bed. She remembers that you once had a husband, but she refuses to remember your ex-husband's name. That man, she calls him.

She does not remember how she got the bruises on her arms or going for a walk with you earlier this morning. She does not remember bending over, during that walk, and plucking a flower from a neighbour's front yard and slipping it into her hair. Maybe your father will kiss me now. She does not remember what she ate for dinner last night, or when she last took her medicine. She does not remember to drink enough water. She does not remember to comb her hair.

She remembers the rows of dried persimmons that once hung from the eaves of her mother's house in Berkeley. They were the most beautiful shade of orange. She remembers that your father loves peaches. She remembers that every Sunday morning, at ten, he ta ~ Julie Otsuka

Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change. ~ Elise Bauman

She rose from her bed full of new resolutions. 'We must get out and about more,' she told her startled mother. 'We must try different things. We are getting groovy.' She drew up a list of events and activities: concerts, day trips, public meetings. She went in a fit through her address book, writing letters to old friends. She borrowed novels from the library by authors who had never interested her before. She began to teach herself Esperanto, reciting phrases as she polished and swept. ~ Sarah Waters

You want to know, companions of my youth,
How much has changed the wild but shy young poet
Forever writing last poem after last poem;
You hear he's dark as earth, barefoot,
A turban round his head, a bolo at his side,
His ballpen blown up to a long-barreled gun:
Deeper still the struggling change inside. ~ Emmanuel F. Lacaba

Allen Ginsberg to Peter Orlovsky - 1958

Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me. ~ Allen Ginsberg

[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed ... 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters? ~ Agnes Repplier

If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend. ~ Heloise D'Argenteuil

In small letters, someone has written NEVER FORGET on one of the slats. I know it's supposed to be a pledge, but it feels like a curse. Don't we have to forget some of it? Don't we have to forget this feeling? If we don't, how will we live? ~ David Levithan

Norman Mailer records in his recent essays and public appearances his perfecting of himself as a virile instrument of letters; he is perpetually in training, getting ready to launch himself from his own missile pad into a high, beautiful orbit; even his failures may yet be turned to successes. ~ Susan Sontag