Claire

“There were occasions when Denys, like all men whose minds have encompassed among other things the foibles of their species, experienced misanthropic moments; he could despair of men, but find poetry in a field of rock.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“We wished our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water was too cold for us.”
― Robert Lowell

“Baldwin told the story again and again of standing on Broadway and being told by Delaney to look down. Delaney asked him what he saw, and Baldwin said a puddle. Delaney said, 'Look again,' and then Baldwin saw the reflections of the buildings, distorted and radiant in the oil on the puddle. He taught me to see, Baldwin said, and that 'what one cannot or will not see, says something about you.”
― Rachel Cohen, A Chance Meeting : Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967

“Maybe the trick is not to define yourself as a container for your experiences, your thoughts. Maybe it's to assume you are larger than the things you have felt over a series of years, that your history is not a list of things your body has done or been present for, that your family is not people who you spent a lot of time around as a child or carry your genetic code. Maybe the trick is to push violently at your own boundaries, to find your own contradictions, and use your teeth and nails to destroy what separates you from something else.

I am trying.”
― Jessa Crispin, The Dead Ladies Project: Exiles, Expats, and Ex-Countries