Familiar Quotations

sydney / i love poetry and old books / here are some of my favorite quotes / lots of vonnegut, mary oliver, and the beat poets

[familiarquotation]

What kind of an animal would do such a thing? The old me, I think.

Hocus Pocus, Kurt Vonnegut

[familiarquotation]

What in fact will happen to me in 9 more years? That is like worrying about a cheese spoiling if you don't put it in the refrigerator. What can happen to a pricelessly stinky cheese that hasn't already happened to it?

Hocus Pocus, Kurt Vonnegut

[familiarquotation]

The 2 prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.

Hocus Pocus, Kurt Vonnegut

[familiarquotation]

let others pray for the passenger pigeon the dodo, the whopping crane, the eskimo: everyone must specialize I will confine myself to meditation upon the giant tortoises withering finally on a remote island. I concentrate in subway stations, in parks, I can't quite see them, they move the peripheries of my eyes but on the last day they will be there; already the event like a wave travelling shapes vision: on the road where I stand they will materialize, plodding past me in a straggling line awkward without water their small heads pondering from side to side, their useless armour sadder than tanks and history, in their closed gaze ocean and sunlight paralysed, lumbering up the steps, under the archways towards the square glass altars where the brittle gods are kept, the relics of what we have destroyed, our holy and obsolete symbols.

Elegy for the Giant Tortoises, Margaret Atwood

[familiarquotation]

Once, when I was young, we camped out at Russian Gulch and learned the names of all the grasses, the tide pool animals the creatures of the redwoods, properly identifying seemed more important than science, more like creation. With each new name, the world expanded.

Against Belonging, Ada Limón

[familiarquotation]

In fairy tales and myths, people are warned not to eat from the strange place they've lost themselves in, or they won't be able to leave it. Persephone swallows six pomegranate seeds from the underworld and becomes wedded to Hades forever. In each country I call home, I eat my way into belonging.5

Self Portrait as Daily Sustenance, Ae Hee Lee

5. so often my longing for a kinder world has been a scalded palate, going for another spoonful of soup that won't cool. And yet-

[familiarquotation]

Had you known me sunnier earlier when my flesh was a light coating of dew on blue grass you'd have bitten me eagerly enough, which is what I've always wanted

Olive Garden, Frank O' Hara

[familiarquotation]

Be not discouraged by your own inept affection. I don't want any of you to be really unhappy, just camp it up a bit and whine, whineola, baby.

Day and Night in 1952, Frank O'Hara

[familiarquotation]

and from anger at time's rough passage I fight off the future, my friend.

October, Frank O'Hara

[familiarquotation]

I was happy just sitting there enjoying all that harsh and beautiful space. I felt comfortable in my skin, reassured that the world was indeed a big and marvelous place.

Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour

[familiarquotation]

But you can never be ten years old again - or even truly feel like ten years old. Not for an hour, not for a minute.

Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour

[familiarquotation]

The universe was large all right, but no larger, it appeared, than the whole wide world ahead of me

Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour

[familiarquotation]

Gladness gleams all the way to the grave

Mary Oliver, Honey Locust

[familiarquotation]

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!

Mary Oliver, Snow Geese

[familiarquotation]

I had no time to haul out all the dead stuff so it hung, limp or dry, wherever the wind swung it over or down or across. All summer it stayed that way, untrimmed, and thickened. The paths grew damp and uncomfortable and mossy until nobody could get through but a mouse or a shadow. Blackberries, ferns, leaves, litter totally without direction management supervision. The birds loved it.

Mary Oliver, Backyard

[familiarquotation]

I open to any page then one more page and start reading from the top left and suddenly I'm in an entirely perfect world again

Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

[familiarquotation]

There's the raccoon in his fog, there the man to his fireside, and both are lonesome for God

Jack Kerouac, Big Sur