Andy Weston

“White people were dangerous and snakes were dangerous and now the two were working together, each doing what the other told it to. She was sure she had seen a snake in a weeded ditch with the head of a white man. Right after she came out of the house on the way to Big Joe's, which she had immediately forgotten, she saw it, long and black and diamond-patterned in the ditch with a white man's head. It had blue eyes. The bluest eyes any white man ever had. She was sure she had seen it. She thought she had seen it. Maybe it was only a dream or a memory of another time. Whatever it was, she still saw it every time she closed her eyes, coiled there on the back of her eyelids, blue-eyed and dangerous.”
― Harry Crews, A Feast of Snakes

“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
― Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps

“There are bad journeys, to a bitter place
I can’t go to – yet, I lean towards it,
tugging to get there, and thank God
I’m clogged with the world. It grips me,
I hold it.”
― Norman MacCaig, The Many Days: Selected Poems

“I think these movements and become them, here,
In this room's stillness, none of them about,
And relish them all-until I think of where
Thrashed by a crook, the cursive adder writes
Quick V's and Q's in the dust and rubs them out.

from "Movements”
― Norman MacCaig, Old maps and new: Selected poems