Hanne

“Poems, even when narrative, do not resemble stories. All stories are about battles, of one kind or another, which end in victory or defeat. Everything moves towards the end, when the outcome will be known.

Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been. Yet the promise is not of a monument. (Who, still on a battlefield, wants monuments?) The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out.”
― John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids