E.M. Taggart > E.M.'s Quotes

“I have an idea," Cazio said after a moment.

"What a lonely creature it must be.”
― Greg Keyes, The Briar King

“Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just sitting thinking, ‘Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,’ but it’s really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.”
― Anneli Rufus

“Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us.”
― Sappho, Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho

“Writing is like a battle. You’re often so into it you don’t have any high ideals. You’re just doing it. I have all these boxing prints on my walls. I always feel that’s what I am, a boxer. I get my brains knocked out every so often.”
― James Purdy

“Pleasure died forty years ago in America, perhaps further back, in a wave of carbon monoxide, gasoline, cigarettes for dames, the belief in everything and everybody, tolerance for the intolerable, the hatred of being alone in silence for more than twenty seconds, the assurance that immortality was Americans eating all-cow franks, with speeded-up peristalsis while talking to a crowd of fifteen trillion other same-bodies eating sandwiches, gassing cokes, peristalsing, and talking, while baseball-sound-movie-TV tomorrow's trots off track betting howled roared farted choked gagged exploded reentered atmo honked bawled deafened pawed puked croaked shouted repeated repeated REPEATED, especially SAY IT AGAIN LOUDER SAY IT AGAIN, stick that product in every God-damned American's mouth and make him say I BOUGHT IT, GOD I BOUGHT IT AND IT'S GREAT IT's HOLLYWOOD IT'S MY ARSE GOING UP AND DOWN AGAIN, IT'S USA, GOD, and if you can't get it in his mouth and make him SWEAR IT SWEAR IT USA, stick it in his anal sphincter (look it up in the dictionary, college graduates, on account of you didn't have time to learn it in the College of Your Choice).”
― James Purdy

“The New York Times Review of Books is toilet paper. Used.”
― James Purdy

“There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.”
― Sappho

“You may forget but
let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us”
― Sappho, The Art of Loving Women

“Stand and face me, my love,
and scatter the grace in your eyes.
”
― Sappho, Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho

“their heart grew cold
they let their wings down”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“Once again love drives me on, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done.”
― Sappho

“You came and I was longing for you.
You cooled a heart that burned with desire.”
― Sappho

“Although only breath, words which I command are immortal.”
― Sappho

“I know not what to do, my mind is divided”
― sappho

“...gracious your form and your eyes as honey : desire is poured upon your lovely face Aphrodite has honored you exceedingly...”
― Sappho

“Love shook my heart
Like the wind on the mountain
rushing over the oak trees.”
― Sappho

“What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.”
― Sappho

“Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables.”
― Sappho

“Whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking
and lovely laughing – oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me
no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears
and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass”
― Sapho

“you came and I was crazy for you
and you cooled my mind that burned with longing”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“The gleaming stars all about the shining moon
Hide their bright faces, when full-orbed and splendid
In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth
with clear silver light.
”
― Sappho

“In fact she herself once blamed me
Kyprogeneia

because I prayed
this word:
I want.”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“If you are squeamish
Don't prod the
beach rubble.”
― Sappho, Sappho

“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“What creature is it that is
female in nature and hides
in its womb unborn children
who, although they are voiceless,
speak to people far away?

The female creature is a letter.
The unborn children are the letters
(of the alphabet) it carries. And the
letters, although they have no voices,
speak to people far away.”
― Sappho

“The moon has set

And the Pleiades.

Midnight.

I lie in bed alone.”
― Sappho

“yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things
and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say
shame would not hold down your eyes
but rather you would speak about what is just”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“Girls, be good to these spirits of music and poetry
that breast your threshold with their scented gifts.
Lift the lyre, clear and sweet, they leave with you.

As for me, this body is now so arthritic
I cannot play, hardly even hold the instrument.
Can you believe my white hair was once black?

And oh, the soul grows heavy with the body.
Complaining knee-joints creak at every move.
To think I danced as delicate as a deer!

Some gloomy poems came from these thoughts:
useless: we are all born to lose life,
and what is worse, girls, to lose youth.

The legend of the goddess of the dawn
I’m sure you know: how rosy Eos
madly in love with gorgeous young Tithonus

swept him like booty to her hiding-place
but then forgot he would grow old and grey
while she in despair pursued her immortal way.”
― Sappho

“I have not had one word from her

Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."

I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love

"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them

"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song...”
― Sappho

“In the midst of the battle between rebellion and surrender Bantry was suddenly uncertain what Flynn was starved for. The sensuality of a man’s kiss? Or the rich, iron taste of blood?”
― Mel Keegan, Nocturne