Carina Mancinone

“But why can't the language for creativity be the language of regeneration? You killed that poem, we say. You're a killer. You came into that novel guns blazing. I am hammering this paragraph, I am banging them out, we say. I owned that workshop. I shut it down. I crushed them. We smashed the competition. I'm wrestling with the muse. The state, where people live, is a battleground state. The audience a target audience. "Good for you, man" a man once said to me at a party, "you're making a killing with poetry. You're knockin' em dead.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Art will wake you up. Art will break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity, you must be fearless.”
― Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love

“They will want you to succeed, but never more than them. They will write their names on your leash and call you necessary, call you urgent.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.”
― David Whyte