Alice Notley > Quotes

“We name us and then we are lost, tamed
I choose words, more words, to cure the tameness, not the wildness”
― Alice Notley, Mysteries of Small Houses

“I'll never know how to live, will you?”
― Alice Notley

“I can’t translate myself into language any more.”
― Alice Notley, Culture of One

“Who do you serve? Do you serve somebody?
I serve the poem, no one.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“Because we rejected a certain kind of critical language people just assumed that we were dumb”
― Alice Notley

“oh each poet’s a beautiful human girl who must die.”
― Alice Notley, Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005

“Abolish these categories of pain
(or is it love)
Let it all be one pain
Pain swallows itself, dies like a star.”
― Alice Notley, Disobedience

“And maybe you can’t know me now.  
Maybe I’m just blood. Whatever that’s for.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“Who defined me? My culture, a culture of mercy, a living codex. I am a unique culture of one, from everywhere. I am her map and her self. I am everyone in the story; I am the story.”
― Alice Notley, Culture of One

“... our production of the world, our interpretation of it, what we've been told to experience and what we've been told we have to do, both worry and distress me. I don't want to live in someone else's dream.”
― Alice Notley

“You're dancing on me
said the cosmic dragon, the galactic surface of all we can see.
So fucking what? she said.”
― Alice Notley

“I'm not too gone to be healed, am I?

I'm not too gone am I?”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“ ‘You are your” “Past, Present,” “& Future,’ he said” ” ‘You divide into” “those components” “in this room’ ” ” ‘But I do not have” “components!’ ” “our three voices said,” ” ‘My
secret name—” “Time’s secret name” “is Oneness,” “is One Thing’ ” “As I—the one” “in the middle—spoke,” “the one of us in front—” “who was the Past—” “had already” “finished speaking” “& was awaiting” “his reply” “He said,” ” ‘Don’t we seem” “to experience” “things
somewhat this way?” “There is past, present” :& future’ ” “The Future then cried out,” ” ‘Where is my life?” ‘Where is my life?” “You have stolen” “my life!’ ” “There was a silence” “The man” “reached out &” “pressed a button” “on the cave wall—” “we three united” “into
one again” “while he wrote words on” “a clipboard” “Then he looked up & said,” ” ‘Going forward?” “Going on?” “Death lies ahead, you know’ ” “Any woman” “may already” “be dead,’ ” “I said”
― Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette

“I knew you were in charge of me but my mind broke on its own.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“Gee whiz, it's all fucking heart-
breaking”
― Alice Notley

“I didn't care much what happened to me, so chance didn't matter.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“you see all night in your dreams. And the blue of my voice can't help but see you.”
― Alice Notley

“I want this noise within me to die down.”
― Alice Notley

“There isn’t any way to be.
I will meet you where you’ve gone. The cards are blank; the cards are empty there.
If I can just have one last cut.
Do you have a plan for the new?
The cards be blank. The symbols be over.
I will tell my fortune with the blank cards of blank.
What do you see?”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“Jack of diamonds is a hard card, why should there be a story? It’s too hard a card to please, and it isn’t the no earth I know. I got hepatitis C from shooting speed thirty-three years ago.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“Gift

Nothing will hurt you that much despite how you feel

the stress on your back shapes your insight

this splendid November rain Toussaint. I find

you by your marks, he says

an imprint

But when I summon you, I talk to—I say—

my memory of your face. It’s kind of crazy

to others. They’re not very interesting he says.

When I first came to this country, and now

I know the language I say, but I had in a dream

spoken it many years previously. That is,

not the language of the dead the language

of France. I took one year of French in 1964

and then nothing but once, in 1977 I spoke French

in a dream all night: I was in the future I

moved here in 1992. Country of the more

logical than I? though the people of my quartier

know and like me, even as I a foreigner remain strange

You do everything alone a woman said to me.

There are ways to care without interfering

but the French speak of anguish frequently

they are conscious of emotional extremity

a terrible gift. It’s all a gift, he says . . .

some haven’t been opened. I’m not sure

he said that it’s nearly my sixty-seventh birthday

today though it’s the day of the dead hello

we love you they say.”
― Alice Notley

“What did you do in your songs?
I don’t know, I’ll never know, you say. Someone else will write them about me, won’t they?
I looked into a void of love. And I fell down. There was nothing else there. No where, where I was no one.
But I have to sing this song. I’m still here.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“And if you’re referring to your anguish, it’s just a thing. The shape of a trailor, a wheel, or a knife. Leave the details of your life and find another one.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“I confess I meant to grow wings and lose my mind.
I confess that I've forgotten what for.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines

“I want to go back to where I once lived,
but it isn't there anymore; that one of me
isn't here.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“You used to be alive, now you’re almost mythic.”
― Alice Notley, Songs and Stories of the Ghouls

“I am the only language I can understand.”
― Alice Notley

“I can no longer find any
rationale for living. My life is as small as a firefly's.
I am always uncomfortable; often I suffer.”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“If you remember better times
you know they were lies, because they led
to this”
― Alice Notley, Certain Magical Acts

“Feeling awful is physiological you say.
God I hate you, I say. Yes you can find the neurons for feeling awful. Do you think you can find the neurons for the fact I hate you?”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines