Ian Janssen

“Where history showed us only ramparts and frontiers, poetry discovered a mysterious predestination that makes two adversaries, whose meeting is inexorable, worthy of each other. And Homer asks no quarter, save from poetry, which repossesses beauty from death and wrests from it the secret of justice that history cannot fathom. To the darkened world poetry alone restores pride, eclipsed by the arrogance of the victors and the silence of the vanquished.”
― Rachel Bespaloff, War and the Iliad

“Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for - that longed-after,
mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart
so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

“Enough - the Centenarian’s story ends;

The two, past and present, have interchanged;

I myself, as connector, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking.”
― Walt Whitman, Drum-Taps

“Being happy is for what?”
― Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart