Franz Wright > Quotes

“I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)”
― Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems

“And the night smells like snow. Walking home for a moment you almost believe you could start again. And an intense love rushes to your heart, and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable”
― Franz Wright

“If only I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed.”
― Franz Wright

“We are created by being destroyed.”
― Franz Wright

“The long silences need to be loved, perhaps more than the words which arrive to describe them in time.”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence

“And let me ask you this: the dead,
where aren't they?”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence

“EPITAPH

Now I'm not the brightest
knife in the drawer, but
I know a couple things
about this life: poverty
silence, impermanence
discipline and mystery

The world is not illusory, we are

From crimson thread to toe tag

If you are not disturbed
there is something seriously wrong with you, I'm sorry

And I know who I am
I'll be a voice
coming from nowhere,

inside--

be glad for me.
”
― Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems

“literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence

“Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche?”
― Franz Wright, Wheeling Motel

“no one is a stranger, this whole world is your home”
― Franz Wright

“Thank You for letting me live for a little as one of the
sane; thank You for letting me know what this is
like. Thank You for letting me look at your frightening
blue sky without fear, and your terrible world without
terror, and your loveless psychotic and hopelessly
lost
with this love”
― Franz Wright

“I believe one day the distance between myself and God will / disappear.”
― Franz Wright

“What I would say is this: writing poems doesn't make you a poet. … It is only with poetry, for some reason, that everyone wants to believe they can try their hand at it once in a while and be considered, can call themselves a poet. … . It's a craft. It's an art. It's a skill. It is not therapy, and it is not compensation for terrible things in one's life. It is a thing in itself. You devote yourself to being an instrument of it, or you wander forever in the belief that it is a form of "self-expression." … And I explained very clearly my opinion of what I think a poet, an artist is. Someone who puts this thing first. ”
― Franz Wright

“P.S."

I close my eyes and see
a seagull in the desert,
high, against unbearably blue sky.

There is hope in the past.

I’m writing to you
all the time, I am writing

with both hands,
day and night.”
― Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems

“The Poem"

It was like getting a love letter from a tree

Eyes closed forever to find you–

There is a life which
if I could have it
I would have chosen for myself from the beginning”
― Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems

“The all-night convenience store's empty
and no one is behind the counter.
You open and shut the glass door a few times
causing a bell to go off,
but no one appears. You only came
to buy a pack of cigarettes, maybe
a copy of yesterday's newspaper --
finally you take one and leave
thirty-five cents in its place.
It is freezing, but it is a good thing
to step outside again:
you can feel less alone in the night,
with lights on here and there
between the dark buildings and trees.
Your own among them, somewhere.
There must be thousands of people
in this city who are dying
to welcome you into their small bolted rooms,
to sit you down and tell you
what has happened to their lives.
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable.”
― Franz Wright

“Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?”
― Franz Wright

“The moon’s a dead rock, but I still like the word,
so black in its white space.
[…]
what can we say to the
moon except You again?

You again.”
― Franz Wright, Kindertotenwald: Prose Poems

“The road to Emmaus is this world.”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence

“But if they were condmened to suffer this unending torment, sooner or later wouldn't they become the holy?”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence

“…All will be
forgotten, everything you perceived, thought,
dreamed, hoped, remembered . . . all the past
all the crawling fucking coughing chestpounding
nose-picking and deathward attempts
to make real some desperate desire, like
standing upright for a minute in the sun. The
sun that will die.”
― Franz Wright

“What is today’s date?
Who is the President?
How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten?
What does “people who live in glass houses” mean?
Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false?
Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche?
Name five rivers.
What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes?
How about some lovely soft Thorazine music?
If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you say to him?
What should you do if I fall asleep?
Are you still following in his mastodon footsteps?
What is the moral of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”?
What about his Everest shadow?
Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one else has ever had it, or the
deliberate extermination of indigenous populations?
Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?
Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an even to those of the
underworld, or vice versa?
Would you visit a country where nobody talks?
What would you have done differently?
Why are you here?”
― Franz Wright, Wheeling Motel

“Auto-Lullaby

Think of   a sheep
knitting a sweater;
think of   your life
getting better and better.

Think of   your cat
asleep in a tree;
think of   that spot
where you once skinned your knee.

Think of   a bird
that stands in your palm.
Try to remember
the Twenty-first Psalm.

Think of   a big pink horse
galloping south;
think of   a fly, and
close your mouth.

If   you feel thirsty, then
drink from your cup.
The birds will keep singing
until they wake up.”
― Franz Wright

“Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.”
― Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard: Poems

“So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence

“In real life
it’s the living who haunt you.

— Franz Wright, from section 1 of “Observations,” Earlier Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)”
― Franz Wright, Earlier Poems

“Furless now, upright, My banished
and experimental
child

You said, though your own heart condemn you

I do not condemn you.”
― Franz Wright

“Walking home, for a moment you almost believe you could start again. And an intense love rushes to your heart, and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable.”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence

“Ressurection of the little apple tree outside
my window, leaf-
light of late
in the April
called her eyes, forget
forget—
but how
How does one go
about dying?
Who on earth
is going to teach me—
The world is filled with people
who have never died”
― Franz Wright

“Poem in other words may or may not result from inspiration but must (in reader and author alike) produce it--”
― Franz Wright, God's Silence