Skip to content

Category: quotes

Bad Poetry (Oscar Wilde)

‘All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.’ – Oscar Wilde

Comments closed

A word with a wise man in Turkey

“Why didn’t you write poetry during your six month military service in Turkey?” “If your mind is not free, how can you begin to think free thoughts?”

Comments closed

Attachment and Individuality

“When we were about to move in, I realised that I didn’t feel the least attachment to anything in my apartment. I could have felt a certain joy, something like intoxication, at this freedom; on the contrary, I felt slightly scared. I had managed, it seemed, to live for forty…

Comments closed

Finding Poetry in Illness

Finding Poetry in Illness “Those who haven’t suffered serious illness rarely understand how isolating it can be. Suddenly I was cut off from all the strong and healthy people scurrying up their ladders of success. Being weak in America—where a presidential candidate can declare that the uninsured should be left…

2 Comments

Hands Hurt

“My hand still hurts me once in a while, when it rains and all, and I can’t make a real fist any more — not a tight one, I mean — but outside of that I don’t care much. I mean I’m not going to be a goddam surgeon or…

Comments closed

Phases

“Look sir. Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I mean it. I’ll be all right. I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?” – J.D Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye

Comments closed

Life as Branches

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous…

Comments closed

The Day You Told Me You Were Tired of Things that Break: A Rejoinder – Mary Jean Chan

I have heard you whisper: broken thingsare sharp edges. Brokenness begetsbrokenness. Why not turn your gazetowards the glazed ceramic vases,with their perfect posture and silentmouths? They have never cursedtheir maker, and will forever beof use. I reply: Consider this.Perhaps the hand touchingthe shattered pieces seesmore life in them than inthings…

Comments closed