Hannah Burke

“History repeats itself. Someone says this.
History throws its shadow over beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
history is the little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of,
I know history. There are many names in history... but none of them are ours.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“AND BOB DYLAN TOO “Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.” Which is why we have songs of praise, songs of love, songs of sorrow. Songs to the gods, who have so many names. Songs the shepherds sing, on the lonely mountains, while the sheep are honoring the grass, by eating it. The dance-songs of the bees, to tell where the flowers, suddenly, in the morning light, have opened. A chorus of many, shouting to heaven, or at it, or pleading. Or that greatest of love affairs, a violin and a human body. And a composer, maybe hundreds of years dead. I think of Schubert, scribbling on a café napkin. Thank you, thank you.”
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver