Robert Elsie Quotes

Poetry

Poetry,
How did you find your way to me?
My mother does not know Albanian well,
She writes letters like Aragon, without commas and periods,
My father roamed the seas in his youth,
But you have come,
Walking down the pavement of my quiet city of stone,
And knocked timidly at the door of my three-storey house,
At Number 16.

There are many things I have loved and hated in life,
For many a problem I have been an 'open city',
But anyway...
Like a young man returning home late at night,
Exhausted and broken by his nocturnal wanderings,
Here too am I, returning to you,
Worn out after another escapade.

And you,
Not holding my infidelity against me,
Stroke my hair tenderly,
My last stop,
Poetry. ~ Ismail Kadare

My land

When I die, may I turn into grass
On my mountains in spring,
In autumn I will turn to seed.

When I die, may I turn into water,
My misty breath
Will fall onto the meadows as rain.

When I die, may I turn into stone,
On the confines of my land
May I be a landmark.

Translated by Robert Elsie ~ Martin Camaj

Our car is constantly in motion. It is raining in the streets we glide through, and this constitutes one more added pleasantness. Some people find it frightfully agreeable to see that it is raining and at the same time be permitted to sense that they themselves are not getting wet. The image produced by a gray, wet street has something consoling and dreamy about it, and so you stand now upon the rear platform of the creaking car that is rumbling its way forward, and you gaze straight ahead. Gazing straight ahead is something done by almost all the people who sit or stand in the electric. ~ Robert Walser

Once you know where the roller coaster is going, are you in for the ride? ~ Robert Fulghum

Foster had in common with every great religious leader of that planet two traits: he had an extremely magnetic personality, and sexually he did not fall near the human norm. On Earth great religious leaders were always either celibate or the antithesis. Foster was not celibate. (p.289) ~ Robert A. Heinlein

The normal Hollywood approach is to have a super-charged production company and then go to the studios for distribution and marketing. ~ Robert Simonds

You need to find a way to propel this creativity to the masses. People get brainwashed and they start to forget what's good. ~ Robert Trujillo

When I get up at five in the morning to go fishing, I wake my wife up and ask, 'What'll it be dear, sex or fishing?' And she says, Don't forget your waders.' ~ Robert Ruark

What's the earth
With all its art, verse, music, worth
Compared with love, found, gained, and kept? ~ Robert Browning

I was pretty nervous when I met Robert DeNiro. I kind of felt like a kid in a candy store for the first time. I couldn't wipe the grin off of my face. But Bobby DeNiro was really, really sweet and made me feel very comfortable. He's very low-key and just a superstar professional, and totally someone to be admired. ~ Yvonne Strahovski

People feel that decisions about their jobs, the way their children are educated, how their church functions, and products they buy are made by someone and some place so distant that they can't find anybody to talk to that has any influence over them. ~ Robert Teeter

If you're fortunate enough with your history, like with Men in the Cities, your work becomes so absorbed in culture that the authorship of it doesn't exist anymore. ~ Robert Longo

Sometimes any emotion is better than the boredom of security. ~ Robert Greene

We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy ... It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong. ~ Robert James Brown

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

Laziness is a secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it's only kept a secret from the person who fails. ~ Robert Half

...it would be nice if something I wanted came to me, on its own. I'm tired of chasing the things I'm supposed to want. ~ Michael Robert Evans

Love is not about grand intentions. It is about small attentions. ~ Robert Breault

The mere fact that you have obstacles to overcome is in your favor ... ~ Robert Collier

I am fascinated to hear of the impact that ESOPs have had on work-force morale in corporations of all sizes such as Sears Roebuck, Potomac Electric Power, Lowe's Companies and the Dow Chemical Company. ~ Robert S. Strauss

Here, rancid air hangs heavily in a void, its texture thick, liquid, clinging, in a night full of the hot smells of decay. ~ Robert Dunbar

I've had a five- or six-year down-spell as a writer, and now that most of the other contracts are cleared or down to the last book, I have a chance to do what I want to do - specifically, something set in New Orleans. ~ Robert Asprin

The solitary Bee Whose buzzing was the only sound of life, Flew there on restless wing, Seeking in vain one blossom where to fix. ~ Robert Southey

Be thoughtful of others and you will not be shy, for they are incompatible addictions. ~ Robert Breault

Art is a communication informing man of his own dignity, and of the value of his life, whether in joy or grief, whether in laughter or indignation, beauty or terror ... Man needs the comfort of his own dignity ... And that's what the artisf is for. To give him that comfort. ~ Robert Nathan

Summer Between Terms"

The day's so calm and muggy I sweat tears,
the summer's cloudcap and the summer's heat...
surely good writers write all possible wrong--
are we so conscience-dark and cataract-blind,
we only blame in others what they blame in us?
(The sentence writes we, when charity wants I...)
It takes such painful mellowing to use error...
I have stood too long on a chair or ladder,
branch-lightening forking through my thought and veins--
I cannot hang my heavy picture straight.
I can't see myself...in the cattery,
the tomcats doze till the litters are eatable,
then find their kittens and chew off their breakable heads.
They told us by harshness to win the stars.

Planes, trains, lorries simmer through the garden,
the reviewer sent by God to humble me
ransacking my bags of dust for silver spoons--
he and I go on typing to go on living.
There are ways to live on words in England--
reading for trainfare, my host ruined on wine,
my ear gone bad from clinging to the ropes.
I'd take a lower place, eat my toad hourly;
even big frauds wince at fraudulence,
and squirm from small incisions in the self--
they live on timetable with no time to tell.
I'm sorry, I run with the hares now, not the hounds.
I waste hours writing in and writing out a line,
as if listening to conscience were telling the truth ~ Robert Lowell

We are born of risen apes, not fallen angels. ~ Robert Ardrey

I'm not having much of a life. It's not awful, just ordinary. I am trying to accommodate the memories of the life I had with the life I am now living, and I just can't do it. After being behind the wheel of a Lamborghini going 140 down Sunset Drive at four a.m., it's hard to get up and put on a polyester shirt and sell books at Barnes and Noble. But I'm not ashamed of it. ~ Robert Goolrick

Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The secret of getting
successful work out of your trained men lies in one nutshell - in
the clearness of the instructions they receive. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Religious fanaticism is the most dangerous form of insanity. ~ Robert Graves

Equations seem like treasures, spotted in the rough by some discerning individual, plucked and examined, placed in the grand storehouse of knowledge, passed on from generation to generation. This is so convenient a way to present scientific discovery, and so useful for textbooks, that it can be called the treasure-hunt picture of knowledge. ~ Robert P. Crease

I never take any notice of reviews-unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about my lizard eyes and anteater nose and the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now. ~ Robert Mitchum

I do not believe in ghosts. I believe in ghost stories. ~ John Robert Colombo

He shall rule them with a rod of iron. - Revelations II:25 ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come in to existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic. ~ Robert Motherwell

There's somewhere you're supposed to go, and if you get quiet enough, you'll make it. ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art. ~ Robert Wilson

I still don't think it's sunk in that I won the Heisman. I'll be able to reflect back on the season, appreciate those types of things and realize that although I wanted to 'be like Mike' when I was growing up, now I get to go out and be in the NFL. ~ Robert Griffin III

The great mind knows the power of gentleness. ~ Robert Browning

We shall be known by the delicacy of where we stop short. ~ Robert Frost

The Professor shook his head. 'On the contrary, my motives are most simple, to advance science and to combat evil. ~ Robert Rankin