Kelley Smith > Kelley's Quotes

“Will it make me something? Will I be something? Am I something? And the answer comes, already am, always was, and I still have time to be”
― Anis Mojgani

“Do not settle for letting these waves settle, or the dust to collect in your veins.”
― Anis Mojgani

“Cussing doesn’t come from a lack of vocabulary – I know all the other words. None of them speak the same language that my fucking heart does.”
― Anis Mojgani

“Stop thirsting for things that are bitter,
Go crazy here, here in these arms that are still
Wrapped around the absent shape of you,
Go crazy with me, thrash about in our bed
And weep and wail and call me by her name,
At least have the courage to let our hearts break together.”
― Patricia Smith Breakdown

“I write you a letter that begins
With I love you and ends with I love you and
Somewhere in the middle is one goodbye for
Every hurt”
― Patricia Smith

“I am standing like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf hoping that one day someone will pick me to make things better.”
― Buddy Wakefield, Live for a Living

“Everyone has some they can't contain.”
― Buddy Wakefield

“I should have told You
before talking in terms of Forever
that any given day wears me out and works me sour,
that there are nights when the sky is so clear
I stand obnoxious underneath it
begging for the stars to shoot at me
just so I can feel at Home.”
― Buddy Wakefield, Live for a Living

“And I know I’m not perfect. But I believe I was meant to be.”
― Buddy Wakefield

“Dear Angry Older People, over 21-ish, anyone who considers themselves an adult, still bitter: Next time you're wondering what wrong with kids today, you might wanna check the examples you've been giving us to work with. Because if you ever want to make sense of us, you’ve got to make sense to us, without telling us you’re too old to walk that far. You’ve got to try to understand why we like looking like rag dolls, why we like looking like the way we feel, and why we keep our senses floored when it’s you behind the wheel. And if you ever really do want to understand why we seem so angry, well for one, you told us we could be anything we wanted to be, but right now, we’re a little busy dodging bombs.”
― Buddy Wakefield

“Well this is me without my prozac, and this is me just shy of nicotine, and mother fuckers, it’s my second time to fail anger management class.”
― Buddy Wakefield

“Lord, let me write,
leave me autistic and typing
until my windows bust into a thousand silver doves
and I know the poem is done.”
― Buddy Wakefield, Live for a Living

“Author's Prayer

If I speak for the dead, I must
leave this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.

If I speak of them, I must walk
on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through the rooms without
touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year
is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition and the darkest days
must I praise.”
― Ilya Kaminsky, Dancing in Odessa

“One would think of a boy laying
syllables with his tongue

onto a woman’s skin: those are lines
sewn entirely of silence.”
― Ilya Kaminsky, Dancing in Odessa

“But in the secret history of anger--one man's silence / lives in the bodies of others.”
― Ilya Kaminsky, Dancing in Odessa

“Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“I've had the wind knocked out of me, but never the hurricane”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“I've been ignored by prettier women than you,
but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence
so far, without spilling a drop.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“I swallowed a hand grenade that never stops exploding.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“When you were sleeping on the sofa
I put my ear to your ear and listened
to the echo of your dreams.

That is the ocean I want to dive in,
merge with the bright fish,
plankton and pirate ships.

I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you
and ask them the questions I would ask you.

Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke
rising from a chimney?
Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing?

I don’t wish I was in your arms,
I just wish I was peddling a bicycle
toward your arms.”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny,

the way monogamy is funny, the way
someone falling down in the street is funny.

I entered a revolving door and emerged
as a human being. When you think of me
is my face electronically blurred?”
― Jeffrey McDaniel

“Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The town was paper, but the memories were not.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“I may die young, but at least I'll die smart.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska