Stephanie Hemphill > Quotes

“Learning to be a lady / is like learning / to live within a shell, / to be a crustacean encased / in a small white / uncomfortable world.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Sisters of Glass

“I fret for Sylvia.
She appears anchored

to the idea of sinking,
which is silly when she so clearly

soars above almost everyone.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“The tides here are too rough. I sink here, happy only when I hoard my little blue sleeping pills, stash the blades of my razor. I accumulate a drawer of drop-out devices, so by December I can escape to a Merry Christmas.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“I cannot be assured of
exactly what I created
be it madness and monster
or beauty and light.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

“Perhaps it is easier
For others
To believe in you
Than it is
To believe
In yourself.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined – A Lyrical Verse Novel of the Teen Girl Who Became a Fearless Warrior

“We built a world of words
and yet none satisfy now.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

“I understand now my final purpose--
through my words and deeds
to inspire others
to find hope and strength
to speak and act.

The girls who fear
the fire inside themselves,
I burned for them.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined – A Lyrical Verse Novel of the Teen Girl Who Became a Fearless Warrior

“Why uproot
a perfectly healthy
white blazing star
from the soil
to allow room
for a roadside weed?”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Wicked Girls

“She said the night was March and black
and that the hill where he kissed her
and enveloped her in his arms
was a sea of grass and she rooted
to the ground like a sapling,
like it was natural and yet
all created for her moment of romance.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“If I were a man
I might not wear the cloak
of anonymity.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

“It may be safe to walk,
but where do you go
when all directions wear
the same black ashen despair?”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Wicked Girls

“She breaks. She's sick. Throw a rope, a net. She falls like a shot-up plane. Help her find the landing strip, Her feet are wet— She'll learn, she'll train. She walks a rope on fire, “Look Ma, no hands.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“Inside a book, she captures all that's lost. She journals so her words won't fly away.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

“I see my future
now not as something
intangible like a dream,
but like a boat
meeting land
after time spent at sea,
a destination I will reach.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

“The trees' bare bony fingers
point crookedly
towards Heaven or Hell
or worse than that, towards nowhere.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Wicked Girls

“Give me the strength to leaf, for I fear otherwise we may hang ourselves.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Wicked Girls

“Give me the strength to lead, for I fear otherwise we may hang ourselves.”
― Stephanie Hemphill

“I want to stay young
and pure and free,
unstained by the sin of Eve.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined

“All you know is
you must change sail
to catch it.”
― Stephanie Hemphill, Wicked Girls