Thomas Nathaniel > Thomas's Quotes

“He had let me know time after time that he was a thinking man, a man of intellect and wit. Yet one unintended hungry look into my eyes and he betrayed each of his words he had carefully spoken to me. I knew it in that instant. He was a viscerally driven man. And one day, he would possess me.”
― Jamie Weise

“Always choose love over fear.”
― A.D. Posey

“Understanding, in fact, is my job, that's what writers are for--to try to understand everyone and everything and put this understanding into words, finished to the gossamer fineness of a rose petal, words made supple and obedient, words cut to hold the reader's mind like a well-made glove that fits like second skin.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

“few things are a more satisfying substitute for the presence of other people than writing, which at the same time provides an excuse for one's antisocial behaviour, for everyone knows that someone who writes has a great need for solitude.”
― Karl Ove Knausgaard, Summer

“She asked me "what is it about
these people -

the silent ones,
the thinking ones,
and the brooding ones


why do I get drawn
to them

without knowing them?

what is it about them?

is there a magnetic
force about them?

or do they cast a spell
on me?

what is it
about these people!

the misfits
the poets,
the writers,

the painters,
the singers,

the dancers,
the musicians,

and all the ones
who create art?

what is it
that pulls me
to them?

is it
their craft
their passion

their words
their thoughts

their loneliness.
their life?

what is it about
these people?"

And I smiled
and said "I will
search the answers
to your questions
in my loneliness.”
― Avijeet Das

“His first love - and perhaps his last - was getting married to someone else in his own courtyard. He cursed his fate. With a heavy heart, he picked up a pen and began to write.”
― Ashwini Rudra, Delhi via Lucknow: Once, love travelled this route

“Writers fish for the right words like fishermen fish for, um, whatever those aquatic creatures with fins and gills are called.”
― Jarod Kintz, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“[Writers] are feared by every tyrant--who shows his fear by burning the books and destroying the individuals.”
― E.B. White, On Democracy

“One of the central loves of my life is coaching and supporting other writers. Specifically, writers who identify as BIPOC, sick/Mad/disabled, queer/trans, femme, working-class/poor, or some or all of the above. I want marginalized writers to get our writing in the world, and I believe in sharing the skills I’ve gained over the past two decades of being a working writer, writing teacher and editor to help us get there.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

“Give a monkey a stick and it will learn how to write.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“There must be two types of writers in the world, those who try to hide what they're working on and the ones begging for someone to ask them about it.”
― Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

“And so he thought of her, who had become his reason to hold a pen for so many years.”
― Kim Jonghyun, Skeleton Flower: Things That Have Been Released and Set Free

“She is me and I am her. Her words reflect my words. Her thoughts encompass my thoughts. Her feelings embody my feelings. I can identify myself with her thoughts, words, feelings. Sylvia Plath and I met a long time ago. I think it was a November evening!”
― Avijeet Das

“Sometimes I wonder why I write down all these memories. Would I want to give them to strangers to read?”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Morte na Pérsia

“Always pay homage to the soldier, and the harlot, for they are the martyrs of humanity’s growth”
― Michael Lieber

“On Social Media people always seem to appear and then disappear. Befriend you as a writer perhaps because they think that you can just help them reach their goals or just maybe because they've heard of you. On some? Like on Instagram? Follow you and then unfollow you in their own shallow pathetic pursuit of looking popular. Not giving two shits about you or have any real interest in your actual work. Once upon a time that used to really bother me because they obviously lack authenticity & any manners. But after thirty some years of writing & publishing and creating and actually earning all of the merits and being myself, being true to the words and all the poetry that is the only real thing that truly matters? I simply say to all of them.

Fuck you. I'm R.M. Engelhardt

And if you haven't heard of me or read any of my work then obviously you don't really know much about poetry”
― R.M. Engelhardt, WHERE THERE IS NO VISION POEMS 2020 R.M. ENGELHARDT

“i write
because

it were these
words

that brought
you and me
to each other.”
― Avijeet Das

“Writers only come to know explicitly what every man who has ever had to be a man understands implicitly. That life is complicated. That you should try to help others when you can. That you shouldn’t contribute to anyone’s suffering. That death is inevitable. That the only true wisdom lies in knowing how useless your wisdom is.”
― Sean Norris, Heaven and Hurricanes

“I know girls aren't supposed to tell, but I've got to tell—just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later—I wish I'd told him.”
― Iris Murdoch, Henry and Cato

“A drunk [once] said to me, "Drugs and alcohol are not our problem, reality is our problem; drugs and alcohol are our solution to that problem." [...]

Aren't we all, in one way or another, trying to find a solution to the problem of reality? If I get this job, this girl, this guy, these shoes. If I pass this exam, eat this pizza, drink this booze, go on this holiday. [...] Isn't there always some kind of condition to contentment? Isn't it always placed in the future, wrapped up in some object, either physical or ideological?”
― Russell Brand, Revolution

“I care," he said in a trembling voice. "I care so much that I do not know how to tell you without it seeming inconsequential compared to how I feel. Even if I am distant at times and seem as if I do not want to be with you, it is only because this scares me, too.”
― Aimee Carter, The Goddess Test

“I held out a lead figurine of Hades—the little Mythomagic statue Nico had abandoned when he fled camp last winter.
Nico hesitated. "I don’t play that game anymore. It’s for kids."
"It’s got four thousand attack power," I coaxed.
"Five thousand," Nico corrected. "But only if your opponent attacks first."
I smiled. "Maybe it’s okay to still be a kid once in a while.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“When Hades decided he loved this girl
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness

Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought, she’d find it comforting.

A replica of earth
except there was love here.
Doesn’t everyone want love?

He waited many years,
building a world, watching
Persephone in the meadow.
Persephone, a smeller, a taster.
If you have one appetite, he thought,
you have them all.

Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. And when one turns,
the other turns—

That’s what he felt, the lord of darkness,
looking at the world he had
constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind
that there’d be no more smelling here,
certainly no more eating.

Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?
These things he couldn’t imagine;
no lover ever imagines them.

He dreams, he wonders what to call this place.
First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden.
In the end, he decides to name it
Persephone’s Girlhood.

A soft light rising above the level meadow,
behind the bed. He takes her in his arms.
He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you

but he thinks
this is a lie, so he says in the end
you’re dead, nothing can hurt you
which seems to him
a more promising beginning, more true.”
― Louise Glück

“I will love you and only you until the stars are shaken out of the sky.”
― Rachel Alexander, Receiver of Many

“Charm me into giving you the red M&Ms. They’re my favorite.'
I looked Hades in the eyes. 'Give me the red M&Ms.'
'Still not good enough.'
'Give me the damn M&Ms,"'I snapped.
He snickered. 'That wasn’t very charming.”
― Kaitlin Bevis, Persephone

“Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

“Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore.”
― Alexandre Dumas-fils, La Dame aux Camélias