Mary Szybist Quotes

Days go by when I do nothing but underline the damp edge of myself. ~ Mary Szybist

In Tennessee I Found a Firefly"

Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung
to the dark of it: the legs of the spider
held the tucked wings close,
held the abdomen still in the midst of calling
with thrusts of phosphorescent light -

When I am tired of being human, I try to remember
the two stuck together like burrs. I try to place them
central in my mind where everything else must
surround them, must see the burr and the barb of them.
There is courtship, and there is hunger. I suppose
there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.
Even imagined ones. Luciferin, luciferase.
When I am tired of only touching,
I have my mouth to try to tell you
what, in your arms, is not erased. ~ Mary Szybist

I do not believe in the beauty of falling. ~ Mary Szybist

I was thinking recently about the popularity of TV shows about people shopping for houses. I wonder if part of their appeal is the chance to vicariously imagine our lives playing out in a variety of spaces. We have a sense that the shape and style of our dwellings affects the shapes of the lives that unfold within them. ~ Mary Szybist

Sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing between faith and hope. ~ Mary Szybist

The Troubadours Etc."

Just for this evening, let's not mock them.
Not their curtsies or cross-garters
or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens
promising, promising.

At least they had ideas about love.

All day we've driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads
through metal contraptions to eat.
We've followed West 84, and what else?
Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields,
lounging sheep, telephone wires,
yellowing flowering shrubs.

Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them,
the violet underneath of clouds.
Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up:
there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled -
darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound
with the thunder of their wings.
After a while, it must have seemed that they followed
not instinct or pattern but only
one another.

When they stopped, Audubon observed,
they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers.

And when we stop we'll follow - what?
Our hearts?

The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love
only through miracle,
but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through,
how to make themselves shrines to their own longing.
The spectacular was never behind them.

Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged ~ Mary Szybist

I have always been attracted to apostrophe, perhaps because of its resemblance to prayer. A voice reaches out to something beyond itself that cannot answer it. I find that moving in part because it enacts what is true of all address and communication on some level - it cannot fully be heard, understood, or answered. ~ Mary Szybist

Via Negativa

Sometimes it's too hard with words or dark or silence.
Tonight I want a prayer of high-rouged cheekbones
and light: a litany of back-lit figures,
lithe and slim, draped in fabrics soft and wrinkleless and pale
as onion slivers. Figures that won't stumble or cough:
sleek kid-gloved Astaires who'll lift
ladies with glamorous sweeps in their hair -
They'll bubble and glitter like champagne.
They'll whisper and lean and waltz and wink effortlessly
as figurines twirling in music boxes, as skaters in their dreams.

And the prayer will not be crowded.
You'll hear each click of staccato heel
echo through the glassy ballrooms - too few shimmering skirts;
the prayer will seem to ache
for more. But the prayer will not ache.
When we enter, its chandeliers and skies
will blush with pleasure. Inside
we will be weightless, and our goodness will not matter
in a prayer so light, so empty it will float. ~ Mary Szybist

There's plenty that poetry cannot do, but the miracle, of course, is how much it can do, how much it does do. ~ Mary Szybist

When I was young, I reached a point where I found myself unable to pray. I was devastated by it. I missed being able to say words in my head that I believed could be heard by a being, a consciousness outside me. That is when I turned to poetry. ~ Mary Szybist

Every mode of travel has its signature mental aberration. ~ Mary Roach

Moeller, who has tasted a naked Cheeto, likens it to a piece of unsweetened puffed corn cereal ~ Mary Roach

At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years. ~ Jenny McCarthy

I'll have a cup of coffee and one of your blueberry muffins." She sighed and looked at me. "Your grandmother was such a good cook. Her blueberry muffins were extraordinary."
"Yes, they were," I said, and I was back on Steiner Street again, Gran and I taking muffins from her tins and placing them on a wire rack to cool, the smell of baked sugar hanging in the oven-warmed air, the muffin tops covered with rivers of blue where the berries had melted from the heat. ~ Mary Simses

Children ask me sometimes what book I'd take to a desert island, but I think I couldn't go to a desert island unless it had a library. ~ Mary Stolz

Mary has produced, together with the Holy Ghost the greatest thing which has been or ever will be - a God-Man; and she will consequently produce the greatest saints that there will be in the end of time. The formation and the education of the great saints who shall come at the end of the world are reserved for her. For it is only that singular and miraculous Virgin who can produce, in union with the Holy Ghost, singular and extraordinary things. ~ St. Louis De Montfort

Nothing ever happens to me. ~ Mary Stewart

The suffix 'naut' comes from the Greek and Latin words for ships and sailing. Astronaut suggests 'a sailor in space.' Chimponaut suggests 'a chimpanzee in sailor pants'. ~ Mary Roach

There are no rules when it comes to survival ~ Mary E. Pearson

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. ~ Mary Oliver

I feel about my dogs now, and all the dogs I had prior to this, the way I feel about children - they are that important to me. When I have lost a dog I have gone into a mourning period that lasted for months. ~ Mary Tyler Moore

In the afternoon they began to watch the creek road. Jack was watching it, too. He whined to go out, and he went all around the stable and the house, stopping to look toward the creek bottoms and show his teeth. The wind almost blew him off his feet.
When he came in he would not lie down. He walked about, and worried. The hair rose on his neck, and flattened, and rose again. He tried to look out of the window, and then whined at the door. But when Ma opened it, he changed his mind and would not go out.
"Jack's afraid of something," Mary said.
"Jack's not afraid of anything, ever!" Laura contradicted.
"Laura, Laura," Ma said. "It isn't nice to contradict."
In a minute Jack decided to go out. He went to see that the cow and calf and Bunny were safe in the stable. And Laura wanted to tell Mary, "I told you so!" She didn't, but she wanted to. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant. ~ Mary Renault

She wondered at her previous blindness; it was as if she had closed her eyelids, and then fancied it was night. No fear that she should return to darkness; her heart felt so light, her spirit so clear and animated, that she could only wonder how it was she had missed happiness so long, when it needed only that she should stretch out her hand to take it. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Good, don't think. Thinking is highly overrated. ~ Mary Jane Auch

You don't have to be crazy to be a writer, but it certainly does help ~ Mary Jo Putney

Women should be someone and not something. ~ Mary Cassatt

This life was a dream of my own making, one where my imagination was my only boundary. It was a life that I alone commanded. ~ Mary E. Pearson

The process of grief has a beginning a middle and an end. The hard part is holding on in the middle. You can hold on. There's transformation happening in these times bringing you to a new place. It's a place you can only get to through the pain. ~ Mary Gauthier

The pressure to be timely with news has increased every year. ~ Mary Hart

Buonaparte is certainly writing, or rather dictating, his memoirs. He walks backwards and forwards with his hands behind him, and dictates so fast that two or three of his suite are obliged to be in attendance, that the one may take down one-half of a sentence, and another the rest; they then literally compare notes, and put the disjointed legs and wings and heads of periods together. This is writing a book as he fought a battle. ~ Mary Russell Mitford

If it is right to be legally married, it is right to be legally divorced ... To be deprived of a Divorce is like being shut up in prison because someone attempted to kill you. It is just as honorable to get out of matrimonial trouble legally, as to be freed from any other wrong. ~ Mary Edwards Walker

Sissy tilted her chair back so far I was sure she'd fall on her head any second. Not that I cared. Maybe she'd leave if she hurt herself. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

Escape is not about moving from one place to another. It's about becoming more. ~ Mary E. Pearson

Icons are also beautiful, with their luminous colors and gold leaf. On first glance, the subjects can seem flat, their poses artificial. But the wonder of the icons has to do with the relationship which develops between the panel and the viewer. Looking at an icon brings me a feeling of serenity; it's like a form of prayer. So I suppose in this sense, the icon is unsurpassed. ~ Mary Pope Osborne

It's not the falling down that counts. It's the getting up. ~ Mary Pickford

All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It's a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice. ~ Mary Travers

I feel compelled to make another 'nonapology.' Many readers are likely to be concerned about my use of masculine pronouns in relation to God. I think I both understand and appreciate this concern. It is a matter to which I have given much thought. I have generally been a strong supporter of the women's movement and action that is reasonable to combat sexist language. But first of all, God is not neuter. He is exploding with life and love and even sexuality of a sort. So 'It' is not appropriate. Certainly I consider God androgynous. He is as gentle and tender and nurturing and maternal as any woman could ever be. Nonetheless, culturally determined though it may be, I subjectively experience His reality as more masculine than feminine. While He nurtures us, He also desires to penetrate us, and while we more often than not flee from His love like a reluctant virgin, He chases after us with a vigor in the hunt that we most typically associate with males. As CS Lewis put it, in relation to God we are all female. Moreover, whatever our gender or conscious theology, it is our duty---our obligation---in response to His love to attempt to give birth, like Mary, to Christ in ourselves and in others.

"I shall, however, break with tradition and use the neuter for Satan. While I know Satan to be lustful to penetrate us, I have not in the least experienced this desire as sexual or creative---only hateful and destructive. It is hard to determine the sex of a snake. ~ M. Scott Peck

Only a portion of my intestinal tract was working. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

Minds of the same set, flock together." Who you are hanging out with says a lot about who you are. ~ Jacent Mary Mpalyenkana

It's not even fair to want someone as heavily and wholly as I crave this person. I feel too small to contain it, and all he did was look at me. ~ Mary Elizabeth

There's no limit to what you can accomplish, but there's always someone one step ahead of you, so it's a constant uphill battle. ~ Catherine Mary Stewart

I always read that men don't like intelligent girls, but I've always found the reverse. ~ Mary Wesley

Many medal winners dream of competing in a sport other than the one they're famous for. ~ Mary Lou Retton

He asked me not to kill myself - asked, not told. His wife had done that, he told me, and it was in a sense the ultimate act of selfishness since it left behind untold and endless suffering for those who had witnessed it and been unable to do anything to prevent it. And so I remained alive. ~ Mary Balogh

Whenever you entertain the Bunch,
Always plan to have a punch. ~ Mary Jane Remole

If the gods have no sense of humor they must weep a great deal. ~ Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

But, if strength of body be, with some show of reason, the boast of men, why are women so infatuated as to be proud of a defect? Rousseau has furnished them with a plausible excuse, which could only have occurred to a man, whose imagination had been allowed to run wild, and refine on the impressions made by exquisite senses, that they might, forsooth have a pretext for yielding to a natural appetite without violating a romantic species of modesty, which gratifies the pride and libertinism of man. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

The stimulus of competition, when applied at an early age to real thought processes, is injurious both to nerve-power and to scientific insight. ~ Mary Everest Boole

O People of the Book (Jews and Christians)! Do not exceed the limits in your religion, and attribute to God nothing except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God, and His command that He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and in His Messengers, and do not say: 'God is a Trinity.' Give up this assertion; it would be better for you. For God is indeed (the only) One God. Far be it from His glory that He should have a son. To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and in the earth. And God is sufficient for a guardian." (Quran 4:171) ~ Qur'an

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. ~ Mary Shelley

It is a strange fact, but incontestable, that the philanthropist, who ardent in his desire to do good, who patient, reasonable and gentle, yet disdains to use other argument than truth, has less influence over men's minds than he who, grasping and selfish, refuses not to adopt any means, nor awaken any passion, nor diffuse any falsehood, for the advancement of his cause. ~ Mary Shelley

But no one said a word, because people hardly ever mention the very things that occur right in front of them. ~ Mary Ann D'Alto

Listen
are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? ~ Mary Oliver

Once, long ago, Jesus had called her name, breaking through the darkness of her oppression to set her free from the seven demons that bound her. now He broke through the hopelessness of her grief and despair. Mary might not have recognized His face, but she could never forget the sound of His voice, not when He called her name.(From "I Have Seen The Lord!") ~ Sherri Gragg

The South has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans. ~ Mary Landrieu