with a nod to Eleanor Roosevelt, you may quote me

New Orleanians are like tea bags, you don't know how strong we are until we are in the water, racing toward us us at 100 mph...

ars poetica

Pearls plucked,
the mussel shells
lie heaped in mounds,
showing us
the aftermath of treasure

~Saigyō

literacki

cautiously, i allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
i found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less i needed
the better i
felt.

~charles bukowski, let it enfold you

quoth the madman

"Maybe you are searching among branches for what only appears in the roots"

~Rumi

quoth the madman

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

~Leonardo da Vinci

ars poetica

"Darling,
what I love in you I pray will always stay
the hell away from me."
~ Paisley Rekdal, from “Intimacy”

literacki

Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter.

~Lemony Snicket

quoth the madman

"You will not be punished for your anger,
you will be punished by your anger."

—Buddha

shafted

-

quoth the madman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject."

~André Breton

"Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject."

▼

André Breton

quoth the madman

“Perhaps a sin that humbles you is better than a good deed that makes you arrogant”
~Hamza Yusuf

quoth the madman

"Boldness is a mask for fear, however great."
~John Dryden

literacki

"What I am after
is silence
in proportion
to desire…"

~Vona Groarke, from “Purism”

quoth the madman

"Where you see ideal things, I see human, alas! All too human things!"

~Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

quoth the madman

"We tend to judge others by their behaviour and ourselves by our intentions."

~Albert F. Schlieder

quoth the madman

"It is irrelevant whether anyone knows about you or not, whether you live totally unknown, unheard of, unnoticed. But if you are blissful, you have succeeded."

 

~Osho

quoth the madman

“All men are homosexual, some turn straight. It must be very odd to be a straight man because your sexuality is hopelessly defensive. It's like an ideal of racial purity.”
-Derek Jarman

literacki

"People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

quoth the madman

"The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd; the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are."

—Fernando Pessoa

quoth the madman

"Nothing is more fragile than the surface."

~ Gilles Deleuze

quoth the madman

"I’m going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to try to listen recklessly."

~Chuang Tzu

love letter

"I could liken you to a werewolf the way you left me for dead but I admit that I provided a full moon..."

literacki

"Seek hazardous adventures."

~Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

quoth the madman

Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are.

You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes.

 Everything.

~James Baldwin

quoth the madman

I tried to drown my sorrows, but those bastards learned how to swim.

~Frida Kahlo

quoth the madman

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

~Dalai Lama

ars poetica

If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
Else in a giant's grasp until the end
A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.

~George Meredith

literacki

"I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me.

My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves."

—Hermann Hesse, Demian

ars poetica

"Ease is my plague: ease makes thee void…"
~  Catullus, from “[51],”

ars poetica

"i.
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.

The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.

~Margaret Atwood, “We Are Hard On Each Other”

literacki

"Love’s language is hyperbole, but whispered.
It’s easy to imagine you’ve misheard."
~ Richard Hoffman, from “Aphrodisia”

literacki

"Are you housed in me or not?
The tenant or the landlord of my skin?
Am I your avatar?
Are you my East Berlin?
Are we an I or each other’s synonym?"

~ Steve Gehrke, from “The New Self”

film quote

"Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus."
~Alpha 60 - Alphaville (1965)

literacki

"I received the grace of shadows. The grace of remaining in the dark."

—Anna Kamienska, from “A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook”

quoth the madman

"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"

—John Keats

ars poetica

Have you had enough darkness yet?
No, I haven’t had enough darkness.
Have you had enough fire?
Maybe.

Enough wind and rain?
Enough black ink?
Ask me again, later.

Have you had enough sugar?
Definitely.
Enough salt? No.

I haven’t had enough salt.
Are you finished with wringing your hands?
Definitely.

Finished with spiders and silks
And creatures of glamour?
Probably not.

Winsome looks?
Completely.
Pity? Never.

I feel pity right now
For everyone who got broken,
Including me. Pity feels

Like a sore and swollen heart
Leaking blood and tears
So hot they sting.

Imagine that. Stay there.
Have you had enough wind?
No. Enough earth? No.

Enough water? No, not nearly enough.
Enough dirt to walk on?

No. Never, never.

Irene McKinney

quoth the madman

"I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma."
~Eartha Kitt

literacki

 

"Sometimes I see something so moving I know I’m not supposed to linger.

See it and leave.

If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock.

Love it and trust it and leave."

 

~Don DeLillo, Underworld

Literacki

"Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust."

 

~Sherman Alexie, from “Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World”

quoth the madman

"I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting."
~  Gore Vidal, At Home

quoth the madman

 

"A multitude of small delights constitutes happiness."

~Charles Baudelaire

quoth the madman

 

"Anxiety is love’s greatest killer.

It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you.

You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

 

~Anaïs Nin

quoth the madman

 

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something."

~Henry David Thoreau

quoth the madman

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

~C. S. Lewis

quoth the madman

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

~Napoleon Bonaparte

haiku

I’ll hang from the words
that try to escape your lips.
Reach down for my hand.

quoth the madman

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

~William Shakespeare

quoth the madman

"Be willing to be uncomfortable.

Be comfortable being uncomfortable.

It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream."

~Peter McWilliams

literacki

"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “Fuck you” signs in the world."

~JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

quoth the madman

 

"Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it."

~Mark Twain