Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book

Zarah

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Zarah.


Loading...
Adam Zagajewski
“Doubt is more intelligent than poetry, insofar as it tells malicious tales about the world, things we’ve long known but struggled to hide from ourselves. But poetry surpasses doubt, pointing to what we cannot know. Doubt is narcissistic; we look at everything critically, including ourselves, and perhaps that comforts us. Poetry, on the other hand, trusts the world, and rips us from the deep-sea diving suits of our “I”; it believes in the possibility of beauty and its tragedy. Poetry’s argument with doubt has nothing in common with the facile quarrel of optimism and pessimism. The twentieth century’s great drama means that we now deal with two kinds of intellect: the resigned and the seeking, the questing. Doubt is poetry for the resigned. Whereas poetry is searching, endless wandering. Doubt is a tunnel, poetry is a spiral. Doubt prefers to shut, while poetry opens. Poetry laughs and cries, doubt ironizes. Doubt is death’s plenipotentiary, its longest and wittiest shadow; poetry runs toward an unknown goal. Why does one choose poetry while another chooses doubt? We don’t know and we’ll never find out. We don’t know why one is Cioran and the other is Milosz.”
Adam Zagajewski, A Defense of Ardor: Essays

Ray Bradbury
“Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.

What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.”
Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

T.S. Eliot
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

Lucian of Samosata
“The city was filled to overflowing with persons who had neither brains nor individuality, who bore no resemblance to men that live by bread, and had only their outward shape to distinguish them from sheep.”
Lucian of Samosata
tags: sheep

Irwin Shaw
“There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.”
Irwin Shaw

68346 Horror Illusion — 247 members — last activity Oct 30, 2019 08:18AM
Do you love what lurks in the shadows, the darkness, the gloomy colours? Do you love being scared and frightened, screaming in unison as a great book ...more
year in books
Sarah A...
794 books | 53 friends

T.A.
4,423 books | 84 friends


Melody
1,939 books | 113 friends

Nina Naso
1,603 books | 246 friends

Karith ...
1,276 books | 99 friends

Uniquel...
3,257 books | 2,860 friends

Sarah L...
1,065 books | 7 friends

More friends…
The Giver by Lois LowryThe Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
Best Young Adult Books
13,332 books — 80,590 voters




Polls voted on by Zarah

Lists liked by Zarah