Magic in Words

a collection of words

[magicinwords]

To be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

Timothy Keller, from The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

[magicinwords]

Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still it explains nothing.

The point is, you're you, and that's for keeps.

Mary Oliver, from Felicity: Poems

[magicinwords]

Try to find the right place for yourself.

If you can't find it, at least dream of it.

Mary Oliver, from Felicity: Poems

[magicinwords]

Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested in, but my own suffering. I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole time it was pain.

Ada Limon, from Calling Things What They Are

[magicinwords]

I'm so good at being alone until I remember what it's like to be loved, and then I'm aching all over again.

Lilyrainpoetry

[magicinwords]

The person you think of despite their cruelty. The sun and its cruelty. How it’s kept its distance and kept us alive. Not needing to know anything about what we do with the rest of desire.

Alex Dimitrov, from August, Love and Other Poems

[magicinwords]

I still think about dying. I do think about death. Or a day in childhood when I saw the only place I could live was here. Inside. So whoever wanted me had to come through the body. Which has rarely been beautiful to me.

Alex Dimitrov, from Waiting at Stonewall, Love and Other Poems

[magicinwords]

I promise you, I was here. I felt things that made death so large it was indistinguishable from air—and I went on destroying inside it like wind in a storm.

Ocean Vuong, from Not Even, Time is a Mother

[magicinwords]

Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me.

E. M. Cioran, from On the Heights of Despair

[magicinwords]

Why don't I commit suicide? Because I am as sick of death as I am of life.

E. M. Cioran, from On the Heights of Despair

[magicinwords]

Why write love poetry in a burning world?

To train myself in the midst of a burning world,

To offer poems of love to a burning world.

Katie Farris, from Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World

[magicinwords]

This is love. It is a mass of ice melting. I can't hold it and I have nowhere to put it down.

Molly Brodak, from Molly Brodak

[magicinwords]

Alone is the star I follow. In love & in solitude: alone is the home with the warmest glow.

José Olivarez, from February & My Love is in Another State

[magicinwords]

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

Elie Wiesel

[magicinwords]

It is no longer bitterness, nor contempt, nor even fear of uncertainty only a thirst . . . a thirst for something unknown that kills me.

Rosalia De Castro

[magicinwords]

Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility. What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason. I hope everyone knows that.

Mary Oliver, from Such Silence, Blue Horses

[magicinwords]

I was born inside the folds of lilac, grew up on an orbit of lightning, and now live between light and grass. I storm and I waken, I gleam and cloud, I rain and snow. The hours are my language and daylight is my homeland.

Adonis, from Songs of Mihyar of Damascus, Adonis Selected Poems tr. by Khaled Mattawa