T. Siculus > T.'s Quotes

“Ready how? Who's ever ready for anything important?”
― Julia Glass, The Widower's Tale

“Of all the virtues, discretion began to seem the most rewarding: it kept people guessing and sometimes, by default, admiring.”
― Julia Glass, Three Junes

“When it comes to love, dogs make pretty steep competition for us people. And rightly so.”
― Julia Glass, Three Junes

“Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.”
― Julia Glass, Three Junes

“It should be enough. To make something beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it-- living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling.
The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Something’s not
right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—
living in the worst parts, ruining myself.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“But truth doesn't count / in law, only proof.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Oh, the things we invent when we are scared
and want to be rescued.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“You're trying not to tell him you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“You wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things.
                 You wanted to be in love
                             and he happened to get in the way.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
― Mary Oliver

“Desire is no light thing.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Then a miracle occurred in the form of a plate of sandwiches.
Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread filled with tomatoes and butter and salt.
He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how slipperiness can be of different kinds.
I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Small, red, and upright he waited,
gripping his new bookbag tight
in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,
while the first snows of winter
floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced
all trace of the world.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“There is no person without a world.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“...And tonight—Geryon? You okay?
Yes fine, I'm listening. Tonight—?
Why do you have your jacket over your head?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can't hear you Geryon. The jacket shifted. Geryon peered out. I said sometimes
I need a little privacy.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“...there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“She stumbled then and Geryon caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn. He felt huge and wrong. When is it polite to let go someone’s arm after you grab it?”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red