Instead Of Making Cathedrals Out Of Christ, Man, Or 'life,' We Are Making It Out Of Ourselves

For why is it meaningless to write with no other function than to assuage fear? Doesn’t that function in itself have a meaning? And why fear the dismantling of language’s semantic function, its being representational of meaning, when that is but one more fear that will drive those in opposition to écriture to write?

Mary Ruefle, On Fear

I want to say the poet is never afraid because he is unceasingly afraid, and therefore cannot become that which he already is

Mary Ruefle, On Fear

To live in this tragedy without raptures

Alicja Rybałko, Curriculum Vitae tr. Regina Grol

but indirectly children know everything there is to know. They just don't know why.

Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty

How I did waste and exhaust my heart.

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

Truth. What ferocity in your quest for it. You destroy and you suffer. In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you. And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate. When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality.

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

The light is astounding, a hammer.

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

tragedy is thinking in action, thinking upon action, for the sake of action

- Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us

In a moment I could destroy the entire legend, from beginning to end, destroy everything, except the fundamentals

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

As far as words go, crying is louder and weeping is wetter.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book