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“The grass below the willow
Of my daughter’s wash is curled
With earthworms, and the world
Is measured into row on row
Of unspiced houses, painted to seem real.
The drugged Long Island summer sun drains
Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson
Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life.
The yellow daylight lines the oak leaf
And the wire vines melt with the unchanged changes
Of the baby. My children have their husbands’ hands.
My husband’s framed, propped bald as a baby on their pianos,
My tremendous man. I close my eyes. And all the clothes
I have thrown out come back to me, the hollows
Of my daughters’ slips…they drift; I see the sheer
Summer cottons drift, equivalent to air.”
― Louise Glück, Poems, 1962-2012

“Henry started to talk. It was so painful to hear him – Henry!
– stumble over his words that I am afraid I blocked out much of what
he said. He began, in typical fashion, by attempting to justify himself but
that soon faltered in the white glare of Julian's silence. Then – I still shudder
to remember it – a desperate, pleading note crept into his voice. 'I disliked
having to lie, of course' – disliked! as if he were talking about an ugly
necktie, a dull dinner party! – 'we never wanted to lie to you, but it was
necessary. That is, I felt it was necessary. The first matter was an accident;
there was no use in worrying you about it, was there?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Something in my soul was rising, rising, ceaselessly, painfully, and refused to be still.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“I think it is necessary to educate the new generations in the value of defeat. In not being a social climber. In this world of vulgar and dishonest winners, of false prevaricators, in the face of this anthropology of the winner from afar I prefer the one who loses.”
― Pier Paolo Pasolini