Jeffrey

“And so I pray I am today as honest
with myself, with life all around me and below and above me,
with all who I encounter.”
― Jimmy Santiago Baca, Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande

“and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
the first time his fingers touched the keys
the same way a soldier holds his breath
the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.”
― Andrea Gibson

“Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“All those years on the psychiatrist's couch and suddenly the couch is moving.
Good God, she is on that couch when the big one hits.
Maidy didn't tell you, but you know what her doctor said? She sprang from the couch and said, "My God, was that an earthquake?"
The doctor said this: "Did it feel like an earthquake to you?”
― Amy Hempel, Reasons to Live