quotations and poetry

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?

Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?

Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?

What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?

Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?

We still and always want waking.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

Yet another beautiful passage from Barnstorming, one of my few absolute must-read blogs.

I tell my students this: often, the most honest stance you can take is that of questioning. The most you can be certain of is that of which you wonder.

-Tracy K. Smith

From an interview with our newest poet laureate in the Iowa Review.

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I’ve heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it’s hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again.

– Glennon Doyle

Thank you to Violet Gaynor, on whose lovely Instagram feed I found these words.

Being yourself seems like the most effortless thing in the world – duh, who else are you going to be? But it’s deceiving, tricky, a summons laden with meandering and failed attempts – and then at last, so wondrously simple.

-Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

Dear old world’, she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
~ L.M. Montgomery

I loved Anne as a child, with the particular passion of a red-headed girl finding a kindred spirit, and was delighted to find this beautiful line on Tamara Willems’ lovely blog.