Bottle on the Bookcase

Quotations from literature, journalism, music, art, etc. For a random post, click here: random. (If you have been quoted here and would like it removed, just let me know, and I'll take the post down.)

[bottleonthebookcase]

“I have forty years’ experience of trying to change the world through singing; it doesn’t work. The thing that you can do with music is bring people together in solidarity around an issue… People bring about change, it’s the audience that has the power, not the artist.”

—Billy Bragg, speaking to Lynsey Chutel for Artworks: Paul Simon’s Political Storm (BBC Sounds)

[bottleonthebookcase]

There is a cant of Christmas, and there is a cant of anti-Christmas. There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas. Thus between those who appreciate and those who depreciate Christmas, it is difficult for an ordinary man to escape bruises.

--The Book of This and That, On Christmas.

[bottleonthebookcase]

"I went to see my father’s cousin Michael. He was born in Poland. When the Nazis came in the west, his parents put him on a train going east, and he never saw them again. They died in a Nazi death camp. When the Russians came in the east, he was arrested, put on a train, and sent to one of the Russian camps. But he lived.

When I went to see him, he wouldn’t tell me any of this. When he went out of the room, his wife said 'He can’t bear to talk about it'. When he came back into the room, he said: 'Tell him the story about my cousin Leosia.' So they told me the story about cousin Leosia.

When the Nazis came in the west, Leosia pretended to be a Christian. She put a crucifix round her neck, and then she fetched her grandmother's brooch, and took the diamonds off it. She took the soles off the heels of her shoes, put the diamonds inside the heels, and put the soles back on. She thought, if there were going to be any problems, she would be able to sell them. Then, she went west into Germany.

In Germany, she worked in a factory. No one ever found out that she was Jewish. At the end of the war, she couldn't face going back to Poland. Her parents, all her friends, and all her relations had been taken away to the camps and killed. She went to Israel to find her brother Naftali. She told him how she had lived right through the war with diamonds in the heels of her shoes. 'I always knew, if ever I got into difficulty, I could have sold them. And maybe, paid someone to help me. And, here they are.' she said. The very diamonds themselves.

And Naftali said: 'Where did you get the diamonds from, Leosia?' And Leosia said: 'From our grandmother's brooch.' So Naftali said: 'Listen carefully, Leosia. Many years ago, our grandmother wrote to me. She said that grandfather's business wasn't doing too well, and so to help out. She had taken the diamonds off a brooch, and put in glass ones instead, and sold off the diamonds. She didn't tell anyone about it. But she wrote it to me, to get it off her chest. You went through the whole war, with nothing more than bits of glass in the heels of your shoes.'"

Michael Rosen, Leosia, from You Wait Till I’m Older Than You

[bottleonthebookcase]

[bottleonthebookcase]

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky.

[bottleonthebookcase]

“A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.”

— J.M. Barrie, To The Five

[firstfullmoon]

Jill McDonough, “Love and the Deli Counter”

[bottleonthebookcase]

Michael Rosen, untitled poem from Carrying the Elephant, 2002.

[Transcript:

I swerve. There are humps and pot-holes. If I try

to drive straight over a hump, it scrapes the bottom

of the car. So it’s best to turn to the left or right so

that I take the hump at an angle. Not face on. The

pot-holes are harder. They hide, looking like ripples

in the road-surface, but as I get near they yawn.

My wheel rolls straight in, hits the far side and the

whole car jolts. What’s hard, is that the holes are often

on the down-side of the humps. So even as I dodge

the hump I land in the hole. Sometimes I spot

the hole on the other side of the hump and at the very

moment I’ve worked out how I’ll avoid it, I find

myself going straight over the hump, dead centre,

and it’s scraping the bottom off some vital out-of-sight

part of my engine. ]

[bottleonthebookcase]

Epitaph

When I am dead, carve this upon my stone: Here lies a woman, fit root for flower and tree, Whose living flesh, now mouldering round the bone, Wants nothing more than this for immortality, That in her heart, where love so long unfruited lay A seed for grass or weed shall grow, And push to light and air its heedless way; That she who lies here dead may know Through all the putrid marrow of her bones The searing pangs of birth, While none may know the pains nor hear the groans Of she who lived with barrenness upon the earth.

Gwendolyn Bennett.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

Josephine Corcoran

[bostonpoetryslam]

Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from Water I Won’t Touch

[sunrisetune]

[ID: This poem -

‘On Travelling Together’, by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

In a Super 8 just outside Iowa City, two twelve-year-old boys

cuddle on the lobby couch, scrolling on their phones.

It’s four in the morning, and they don’t expect me, or anyone,

in the holy space they’ve drawn for themselves.

Their parents are asleep on the third floor, resting

before a hockey tournament or some other rough-and-tumble game.

It’s clear by the way the boys jump as I walk by;

their parents know nothing. The floor is lava.

The continental breakfast will start soon.

The couch they’re on is an island I’ve been to.”

/End ID]

[bottleonthebookcase]

Michael Rosen, untitled poem from Carrying the Elephant, 2002.

[Transcript:

It didn't work out the way it's supposed to. The four

of us on a platform. We were supposed to have

given up. We should have learnt that being

unconvinced is what counts for wise. But we're

here. Shocked again. Coming out of our kitchens

to say, if nothing else, everyone here is sick of the

age-old cruelties. We should have noticed that

history ended but we got distracted by some

massacres. So we're here again. It didn't work out

the way it's supposed to. ]

[bottleonthebookcase]

Travelling in a Comfortable Car

Travelling in a comfortable car Down a rainy road in the country We saw a raggedy fellow at nightfall Signal to us for a ride, with a low bow. We had a roof and we had room and we drove on And we heard me say, in a grumpy voice: no We can’t take anyone with us. We had gone on a long way, perhaps a day’s march When suddenly I was shocked by this voice of mine This behaviour of mine and this Whole world.

- Bertolt Brecht.

[bottleonthebookcase]

In a Parlor Containing a Table

In a parlor containing a table And three chairs, three men confided Their inmost thoughts to one another. I, said the first, am miserable. I am miserable, the second said. I think that for me the right word Is miserable, said the third. Well, they said, it's quarter to two. Good night. Cheer up. Sleep well. You too. You too. You too.

-Galway Kinnell.

[bottleonthebookcase]

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgement and should be trusted with nothing.

Clive James, Clive James On Television.

[bottleonthebookcase]

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

Edith Wharton, A First Word.

[karamazovdmitri]

—Anna Akhmatova, The Last Toast, tr. by D. M. Thomas