Alexis Atkinson

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“May I write words more naked than flesh,
stronger than bone, more resilient than
sinew, sensitive than nerve.”
― Sappho

“Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.”
― e.e. cummings

“I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time