Laura Hartmark > Laura's Quotes

“A story matrix connects all of us.
There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part.”
― Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave

“When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“What is gentlest in love is love's violence.
Losing yourself in love, you reach love's goal.
Love makes you suffer, as love makes you whole.
Love steals your everything and makes you rich.
Love is both meaningless and poetry.
Captured by love, by love you are set free.”
― Marilyn Nelson

“A wounded dear leaps the highest”
― Emily Dickinson

“And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger. - Dreamtigers”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I can’t listen to you. I can’t listen to your voice. It’s as though I’d drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along – and I know I’m drowning – but I go on down.”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

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

“There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity”
― Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems

“I leave to arrive,
go away to be closer.”
― Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Trekways of the Wind

“I'm in love with New York. It matches my mood. I'm not overwhelmed. It is the suitable scene for my ever ever heightened life. I love the proportions, the amplitude, the brilliance, the polish, the solidity. I look up at Radio City insolently and love it. It's all great, and Babylonian. Broadway at night. Cellophane. The newness. The vitality. True, it is only physical. But it's inspiring. Just bring your own contents, and you create a sparkle of the highest power. I'm not moved, not speechless. I stand straight, tough and I meet the impact. I feel the glow and the dancing in everything. The radio music in the taxis, scientific magic, which can all be used lyrically. That's my last word. Give New York to a poet. He can use it. It can be poetized. Or maybe that's mania of mine, to poetize. I live lightly, smoothly, actively, ears or eyes wide open, alert, oiled! I feel the glow and the dancing in every thing and the tempo is like that of my blood. I'm at once beyond, over and in New York, tasting it fully.”
― Anaïs Nin

“I would like to die
as I have lived
disappear among the tundra winds
be transformed into birdsong”
― Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Trekways of the Wind

“You will hear thunder and remember me,
and think: she wanted storms...”
― Anna Akhmatova

“I did not have to learn to love you: You were chosen for me. I knew that the first time I saw you.

—George Washington Carver”
― Marilyn Nelson, Carver: A Life in Poems

“It is the custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.”
― J.M. Barrie

“But I don't give up; I forget why not.”
― Dorothy Parker

“There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life. ”
― Hazrat Inayat Khan

“We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spill'd on promiscuous lips

We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily-news
Printed in blood on its wings”
― Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems

“The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.”
― Louise Gluck, It Is Daylight

“We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead.”
― Federico García Lorca, Poet in New York

“What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“Pero yo ya no soy yo
Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

But now I am no longer I,
nor is my house any longer my house.
”
― Federico Garcia Lorca

“In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”
― Federico Garcia Lorca

“I'll go to Santiago.
And the banana tree a jellyfish.”
― Frederico Garcia Lorca

“You do not know just what you've been forgiven.”
― Anna Akhmatova

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Sid Ziff

“Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.”
― Gloria Anzaldua

“To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be a crossroads.”
― Gloria Anzaldua

“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.”
― Gloria Steinem

“How sweet it is to let God purge our souls of ego and bitterness, and to have a little taste of heaven here on earth.”
― Marilyn Nelson, Carver: A Life in Poems