Daisy Dunn > Quotes

“History and myth were not necessarily so distinguishable.”
― Daisy Dunn, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet

“These were not the promises you once made Me in a warming tone, these are not what you bade My wretchedness to hope for, but a happy marriage, Longed-for wedding songs, everything The errant breezes have scattered vain. May no woman now believe a man when he makes a promise, May no woman hope the words of her man are true. While their minds are desirous, desperate to obtain something, They are afraid of swearing nothing, There is nothing they won’t promise. (Poem 64, lines 139–46)”
― Daisy Dunn, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet

“The inaccuracy or implausibility of a lover’s words rarely diminished their appeal in the moment they were spoken.”
― Daisy Dunn, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet

“Both love and hate require forgetfulness. But memory is what drags the mind through both, one and the other, to and fro, and explains why only time can defeat the torment.”
― Daisy Dunn, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet

“She unleashed in him a longing to accomplish something, even if he did not know what it was.”
― Daisy Dunn, Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet

“Lucky, I think, are those men with a god-given gift for doing what deserves to be written about or writing what deserves to be read – and very lucky are those who can do both. Through his own books and yours, my uncle will be one of these. Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, Letter 6.16”
― Daisy Dunn, The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny