Quotes by authors that you love

What are some quotes by authors that you love? Maybe some of the more unusual ones, ones we haven't heard of that you ran across in an essay, interview, article, or collection of that author's letters. Not quotes easily found on the Internet.

I've been leafing through Theodore Roethke's Straw for the Fire and ran across:

"Tonight I looked at Wilfred's (the cat's) mouth and was struck by its beauty. An inexpressible feeling of tenderness for it..." (213)

What a great book! I'm at work or I'd add one from it. Roethke gems; unpolished.

Here's one from an article by Orhan Pamuk that appeared in the Jan. 1, 2007, issue of The New Yorker. He says that a writer "must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own."

It's posted by my desk, for inspiration, next to one from Bob Dylan: "An artist must always be in a state of becoming."

Mechan1c, we should take turns posting our favorite Straw for the Fire gems!

Another one from Theodore Roethke in Straw for the Fire that I relate to:

"I like to teach because I like to see people part of the day"

And another:

"Not the boring moments, the small gratifications, but the struggle where we become something more than shadows."

--Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire

This is from LONG LIFE.a book of essays & poems written by pulitzer prize winning poet Mary Oliver in the months following the death of her companion of almost 40 years. Mary Oliver is a long-time favorite poet for I have always been able to identify with the natural world she writes about. In LONG LIFE I can identify with her shattering loss.

"(M) would know all stories that are gone now, dispersed to the wind, to the ages, through layers of uncaring, lost in pigeon-holes in the backs of abandoned desks, or the files of defunct institutions, or the sagging brown boxes in yard sales in summer, in distant towns, bought at last for a dollar or a song, and put into someone's car and driven off, or--unsold at the end of the long, warm day--carried up the stairs and put back, for another season, under the eaves of the old barn...And, not letters only, but things--old clothes, hats, mirrors with a streak of tarnish, books so old and dry they have summoned toward themselves every possible blot of moisture, so that they are swollen & unshuttable now forever...
Things! Chiffon, and lace, and bruised velvet. Shoes, with tiny buttons along the sides. And photographs, the unnamable faces gazing out, everything to say and no way, no way ever again to be heard. "

"In this first assignment just care about words. Dwell on them lovingly."

And...

"How wonderful the struggle with language is."

finally...

"He hasn't got room in his life for a dog or a cat. All he's got room for is improvement."

Straw For the Fire

"When he read his favorites aloud, Yeats, Hopkins, Auden, Thomas, Kunitz, Bogan, poets with "good ears," something happened that happens all too infrequently in a classroom. If a student wasn't a complete auditory clod, he could feel himself falling in love with the sounds of words. To Roethke, that was the heart and soul of poetry. And that was his strength as a teacher: he gave students a love of the sound of language. His classes were clinics, He performed therapy on the ear,"

Richard Hugo, Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching...The Triggering Town

I keep any quote I find that appeals to me (for whatever reason). Therefore, I have two thick notebooks filled with sayings, quips, aphorisms. I'll just pick a couple:

"Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory."
-Tennessee Williams

"A man's poems, if they are good poems, are always older than himself; and sometimes they are ageless."
-Dylan Thomas

"He went out a writer--unsung, perhaps, but it was in the writing and not in the applause that he found where he belonged."
-Robert Draper (remembering Grover Lewis)

"When your Daemon is in charge do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait and obey."
-Rudyard Kipling

"By the truth I mean unresisted insight, which is what gets us by, which makes one person's life and sufferings comprehensible to another."
-Robert Stone

And, finally, one for you, Theresa:

"When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip."
-Truman Capote

These are all so lovely - I read them through the wee hours of the morning and couldn't bring my brains to remember any.

Cliffburns - like you, I've a lot of quotes collected over the years but I am not at my home right now...here's one from memory that might bring a laugh to you all.

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx (who else!)

I've a copy of Leaves of Grass with me, for some reason I've been thinking of reading it again and tada! Like magic, I just picked up a copy at a bookstore in the airport of all places. It made my heart feel better to even find a copy in an airport bookstore.

So here is a taste of it...

"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall posses the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor look through the eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."
- Walt Whitman

Villandry:

The Marx Bros. (especially Groucho) are my heroes and it's delightful to read any quote attributable to their anarchic spirit.

And, Whitman, always a delight to read his work, excerpted or otherwise.

Darn fine choices.

Cliff: I LOVE the Capote quote!!!! I will share that with my students soon--thank you!

Also, thanks for the tip about the Bergman book. I ordered both Bergman on Bergman and Images.

#13: We just a few moments ago finished a discussion of Whitman/Stevens/Roethke/Dickinson in my Modern Poetry class. I love the excerpt from Whitman that you chose. Wow. So powerful and feels so true.

Theresa:

Hey, what are pals for? Have a great weekend, everyone...

Cliff, your Kipling quote reminded me of one from Hildegard of Bingen: "Those who long to complete God's works must always bear in mind that they are fragile vessels, for they are only human. . . . They can only sing the mysteries of God like a trumpet, which only returns a sound but does not function unassisted, for it is Another who breathes into it . . ."

Two very different people; two very similar ideas.

Hildegard and Kipling, that is an odd combination...but lovely sentiments, whatever the era, whatever the source. I always found it fascinating that Borges loved Kipling. Another odd mix...

18-Margad
I just finished The Journal of Hildegard of Bingen by Barbara lachman who has translated much of Hildegard's work from the original Latin. Hildegard believed that singing the prayers of the Mass & the Divine Office completed the ceremonies of praise. There was no written music. She introduced the newly invented staff - 4 spaces, 5 lines & used the motion of her fingers & hands to indicate the melody's rise & fall . Her choir of nuns was unlettered. & learned the chants from memory. her music spread through out Europe & was used for centuries. I have a CD "Women in Chant" sung by Benedictine nuns in the original Latin & can imagine those same melodic lines floating across the Rhine valley almost 1,000 years ago.

"Don't say: create." --Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire

Boy, Roethke really put his finger on it!

I could say more about Hildegard, but will obey Roethke until my article is finished.

I've been reading Ron Rosenbaum's wonderful collection of essays THE SECRET PARTS OF FORTUNE and just came across a line from his essay on Nabokov in which he uses the term "trance-spun spell of art".

Isn't that lovely?

I love LibraryThing, and I love you guys! I spend far too much time in my studio, and not enough time in the world. You all are proof that other people love books as much as I do...

Anyhoo, here are a few of my favorites:

"I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it." Natalie Goldberg - Writing Down the Bones

"Most writers appear neurotic; the truth is, we don't know the half of it." Betsy Lerner - The Forest for the Trees

"I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, at everyone. ... I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbut, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen and ink. I write because I believe in literature in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten... I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. ... I I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy." Orhan Pamuk - Nobel Lectures

LOVE that Pamuk quote. He sums things up perfectly.

LheaJLove, I like the one by Betsy Lerner... I haven't picked up The Forest for the Trees and will now, definitely.

(and I will second the your sentiments whole heartedly!! btw, what kind of studio??)

I really enjoyed FOREST FOR THE TREES. Very practical, earthy advice. I recommend it too...

My goodness, I love Forest for the Trees... While I was typing the initial post I was heavily debating over which quote to include.

So I'll add a few more:

"Chances are you want to write because you are a hanted individual, or a bothered individual, because the world does not sit right with you, or you in it. Chances are you have a deep connection to books because at some point you discovered they were the only truly safe place to discover and explore feelings that are banished from the dinner table, the cocktail party, the golf foursome, the bridge game. Because the writers who mattered to you have dared to say I am a sick man."

"Asking whether you've got it, whether you should stick with writing or quit, is a little like asking if you should continue living. It's beside the point. No one can give you a reason to live if you don't have the will. FOr most writers, being unable to write is tantamount to suicide anyway."

"Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people."

Great book, Forest for the Trees. I'll will have to re-read it. And the Orhan Pamuk quote is wonderful. There's a lot of solace in realizing I'm not the only person who is like this, and that it's not a condition I should necessarily fight. It often feels very selfish to insist on living a writer's life.

Ran across this quote on writing by (of all people) Lord Byron...

"to withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all."

BTW - I'm really enjoying my copy of "The Forest for the Trees"

Thanks for the recommendation!

As a shy person, I was intrigued by this quote from Andre Dubus:

"Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people."
Andre Dubus

You know, Theresa, I hear Powdermilk Biscuits, among many other things, give shy people the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.

What a freeing idea from Dubus!

#32: Do you have a recipe for those biscuits?
#33: I know; I thought so, too. I feel my shyness must come from childhood/adolescence when people picked on me unmercifully. The bane of my existence was a girl named Moreen in junior high. We had a seating chart for lunch and I had to sit next to her. She made fun of me everyday. It was just awful. People who were otherwise my friends sat across from us and said nothing. They were afraid of her. But I should be over it by now, and, certainly, adults are much too busy to pay attention to what each other is doing!

Still, I wouldn't mind having one of them biscuits!

I've heard that a tendency to shyness is genetic. I was painfully shy from the time I was a small child. In my late teens I simply made a decision to get over it, and over time I mostly did. Being involved in amateur theater was a big help, partly because it's great practice to get up on stage and speak (loudly) words that someone else wrote, and partly because theater people tend to be exceptionally accepting of each others' quirks and foibles.

I agree--for me, drama in school made those years bearable. Practicing for hours after the end of the school day, hanging out with a good group of people, the comradeship that developed (and a few romances, as well). Unbelievably terrible plays but formative years nonetheless. Hope my sons become drama/artsy nerds and I'm happy to report they are showing every sign of it. Without some aspect of the arts in my life during those horrific school years, God knows where I would have ended up...

This more or less random quote from one of my favorite authors speaks strongly to me right now:

"But his cause for satisfaction was of course his ship. It seemed to him that she had never sailed so sweetly, and that her people had never worked so well and heartily together. He knew that this was almost certainly the last leg of her last voyage, but he had known that she was mortal for a great while now and the knowledge had become a kind of quiet heartbreak, always in the background, so that at present he took very particular notice of her excellence and of each day he passed on her."

from The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian.

That's beautiful, RainMan. Perhaps great joy always has this kind of sorrow at its heart, because all experience, all emotion, is ephemeral.

Interesting thought, margad -- I agree about the connection of joy and sorrow, but am not sure about great emotion being ephemeral. It can endure in my experience anyway. Or, if we mean that in the grand scheme of things our emotions pass away, I of course would agree. I'm reminded naturally of The Preacher's vanities (Ecclesiastes) and also of the ancient Greek cliché of how we humans are like the leaves in our ephemeral nature.

#39: I am intrigued by this discussion about emotion being (or not being ephemeral). Perhaps each of you could explain further what you mean?

When I started Art is Life, I was thinking about Roethke's belief that "we think by feeling." So much of is poetry his an attempt to capture that feeling before it diminishes or leaves us. Feeling here, as I would take it, means a connection to what is vital. It is a moment of transcendence.

Then there is the solidity of love that Shakespeare talks about: "love is an ever fixed mark" unshaken by tempests. So there is a durable nature to feeling as well as a transcendent nature, it seems to me.

What do you think?

I do think emotions are ephemeral by their very nature. It's true that we can become stuck in certain emotional conditions, like depression, but even within those, our feelings do fluctuate.

Joy is an especially ephemeral emotion, almost as ephemeral as ecstasy, because it is so strong. We can't easily maintain a state of joy. It's odd that happiness seems, at least to me, to be more fleeting than sorrow. But perhaps we're hard-wired to return to a certain level of dissatisfaction. If we were completely contented (or even joyful) over long periods of time, we might neglect to pursue survival needs. Our ancestors had to spend a lot of time hunting for food, anticipating danger, and so on. If they were too contented all the time, they might not have survived and multiplied to produce us!

But it would be so nice, wouldn't it, to maintain a feeling of joy over a long period of time. That's why I think there is a sorrow at the heart of joy, because it can't last. People may have invented Heaven in order to believe that someday, somewhere, we will be able to have that experience of perpetual joy.

Changing the subject slightly - I'm certain Roethke is at least partly right in saying "we think by feeling." But it seems dangerous to me.

We are three in one, the rational, the irrational, and the spiritual. We feed the rational constantly, the irrational which contains our emotions generally require a sense of living in constant community with others. Books and television are solitary activities which inhibit interaction with others. Work is about the only opportunity many of us have of interacting with others and much of that interaction is directed toward objects rather than community.

Humans need community to feed our emotions. How many of us sit outside on a pleasant evening with at least one, if not more empty chairs next to us, waiting for a conversation to come along?

Think of it, we are at our lowest emotional state when we feel isolated with no one to discuss our joys and our sorrows, hopes and frustrations, or even nothing of importance at all.

Why do so many of us participate in these threads? Is it the closest thing we have to community outside of our homes and families?

"To seek, always to seek!"
-Leo Tolstoy (cried out on his death bed)

"Perhaps what resides at the heart of the highest definition of the hero is the notion of divinity, the idea that something greater than ourselves can create from darkness a guiding and redeeming light."

-Bruce Meyer (HEROES)

"It's always night/or we wouldn't need light..."

-Thelonious Monk (quoted in Pynchon's AGAINST THE DAY)

margad: In what way is "thinking by feeling" dangerous? Do you mean the runaway emotions that sometimes lead to jingoism? Or perhaps rampant passion? I am always interested in this topic and how people react to this notion about "feeling" because I do indeed "think by feeling." More than any other faculty, I use feeling. We had a discussion about this at the Myers Briggs group, and some of the rationals there feared and distrusted feelings, whereas feeling and intuition are how I move through the world. Sometimes I think the rational faculty is stressed too much, but that is because, temperamentally, I am more comfortable with feeling than logic.

I do understand that feelings can be manipulated and can feel unstructured and chaotic for many people. But to me feeling is an important form of intelligence: think of Counselor Troy on Star Trek; her intuition was seen as an important and necessary form of intelligence.

Also, there is a Native American belief that one should "think" with the heart, or see the world through the "eye of the heart," i. e. feeling. Again, I think those with more rational temperaments have trouble with this idea and see "feeling" as inferior to "logic." However, what some people often don't see is that "logic" has its dangers and limitations, too.

I would love to have a discussion about this here if others are interested.

geneg: I couldn't agree more about why many of us participate on these threads. A sense of community forms. Unlike other groups I've watched, on AOL for instance, the people here at LT seem interested in real conversations. I see a lot of cruelty at other sites, and I never wanted to participate on them. It is amazing how cruel people can be when they have anonymity.

Cliff: that Tolstoy quote is awesome. I've never seen that one. I also love the Meyer quote about something greater than ourselves. The Monk quote is indeed wonderfull, too. Thank you for these.

I should have qualified, Theresa. Yes, I was thinking of jingoism in particular. When we are ruled by fear, we so often do stupid and dangerous things. Just now I was going to say that thinking by feeling, alone, is what seems dangerous to me, because of course we can't eliminate feeling from our thought processes (perhaps when we think we have done that is exactly when we are at our most dangerous, because we're unaware of the feelings that are driving us). But when I set down that line about being ruled by fear, it occurred to me that perhaps what feelings we're ruled by is the most important thing. Nevertheless, I do think we have to filter our decisions through a rationalist screen as well as an emotional, or we risk losing sight of the longer term. So often, our strongest emotions relate to the immediate present.

Geneg, I love that you put the irrational and the spiritual in two different categories!

Yes, I love that Tolstoy quote, too, and also had not known about it. What an adventure he was setting off on! I wonder if I will be able to think of death that way when the time comes. It's easy (well, easier, anyway) to be spiritual and philosophical when it's not staring you in the face.

Margad:

The Tolstoy quote jumped out at me too--when confronted with "the dark road" how many of us will have the perspective that our adventure really is just beginning, that life was but a prologue, preparation for worlds to come?

To die in terror or hope--how to manage to the latter without giving in to the former. Aided, perhaps, by a sense that your life had achieved or at least recognized your purpose and you have attempted to grasp it, that the path you've walked was the one you were MEANT to seek and follow. To succumb knowing that you achieved part of what you'd set out to and that here, in your closing hours, you are surrounded by family and friends, seeing from their eyes that you made an impact on their lives and it was a good one.

Morbid thoughts, perhaps, for so early in the morning. Always a pleasure sharing these things with you, folks...

I have, to this point, lived a most unremarkable life, as have the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents of the most remarkable people. Each one of us, regardless of the lives we live, are part of the warp and woof of the life fabric of the world. Our lives, in and of themselves, may seem unimportant, but most of us are not given to know how and in what ways they may have been important.

How many of the books we read are about ordinary people living ordinary lives of (triteness alert) quiet desperation? How many of us live these same lives never knowing that had we not lived our lives, someone we influenced or was our posterity would not have accomplished a world changing feat, or made an earth-shaking discovery, or was a great general or President who saved the world. We can never know how our lives may have had importance that will never accrue to us, but are our legacy, nevertheless.

Everyone's life is important. As you say, Gene, we are all part of the warp and woof of the world's life fabric. (Nice way of putting it.) But I think we all have a personal life mission, something we sense we are meant to do, whether or not it involves making a big splash that the world consciously takes note of. Making a big splash is often the least important thing (though the Pluto-in-Leo generation I'm part of tends to obsess about it).

I understand what Cliff means about wanting to die with the feeling that one had recognized one's purpose and, at the very least, strived to achieve it. Better, to be able to recognize that one had, indeed, fulfilled one's purpose.

I have been struggling with the tension between the two poles of achievement Cliff mentions: the personal and the social. Right now, it feels as though my obligations to husband and family are in conflict with my ability to grasp my personal life purpose - developing my writing abilities to the point that they are of real value to the world at large, or a portion of it. How can I write without the space to be alone for a large stretch of the day? How can I nourish my marriage without being available to my newly-retired husband?

#45, 46, 47, 48 Thanks for sharing these thoughts. I'll need to think on them a bit. There's plenty to chew on.

I got up this morning thinking about "feeling" discussion. I have thought so much about this notion of "feeling" and of what Roethke means by "we think by feeling." I'm not sure I'm quite there yet, but this is my idea:

There must be different qualities of feeling. There is a kind of feeling which is unthinking, immediate, such as what happens when we are manipulated and give in to jingoistic tendencies.

I know there is a quality of feeling that can cause a sort of blindness: love can be like that. It must be why the ancients compared it to the moon, luna, lunatic. It makes one totally unreasonable and vulnerable.

But there *is* a quality of feeling, which is more like intuition, perhaps, which I believe is almost synonymous with the imagination, that mysterious force authors have talked about for centuries. This is the kind of feeling Roethke sought to tap into, that vast river of feeling that connects us to the cosmos. To "think" with this kind of "feeling" is to be whole, connected, intuitive, and spirit-filled. It is the quality of feeling I seek and hope to be guided by.

Margad:

There's a wonderful scene in Sam Peckinpah's western "Ride the High Country" in which two old cowboys are talking about what's important to them and the Joel McCrea character states: "I want to enter my Father's house justified".

And I couldn't sum it up better than that. To know that I had lived a life that did more good than harm, to know I enriched the people around me with laughter and words of support, that I was a strong and fair and kind father and husband...that when it's all over and done with I can face death with courage and the knowledge that I did the best I could, no excuses, no blame...and have earned a proper and deserved rest.

What else is there?

Good thoughts, Cliff. Just to have that goal is, in a certain way, to have fulfilled it, I think.

Aha, Theresa, I know what you mean now. I don't call it feeling, because I don't consider it an emotion, although it can perhaps generate emotion: contentment - or even, rarely, a kind of rapture. It's like when Gene put the irrational (like emotion) and the spiritual (intuition/imagination/the mysterious force connecting us with the cosmos) in two different categories. It's the wind that moves through us and turns us into flutes for a greater wisdom than we can generate on our own.

Margad:

That last line was pure poetry, my friend. Smashing!