Christine Bissonnette

“Here is a book of tongues.
Take it. (Dark leaves invade the air.)
Beware! I now know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it.”
― Gwendolyn MacEwen, The Poetry of Gwendolyn Macewen. Selected and Introduced by Margaret Atwood

“Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.”
― T.S. Eliot

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“It was an odd experience, this bringing to life of pages born of my pen and forgotten. From time to time they interested me -- they surprised me as much as if someone else had written them; yet I recognized the vocabulary, the shape of the sentences, the drive, the elliptical forms, the mannerisms. These pages were soaked through and through with my self -- there was a sickening intimacy about it, like the smell of a bedroom in which one has been shut up too long.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed