Quote Catalogue

Poems, quotes and art for all occasions.

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Nina LaCour via letsbelonelytogetherr

[apocryphics]

[metamorphesque]

'things there are no words for, but should be', tatheve simonyan

[huariqueje]

Orange on yellow - Rutger Hiemstra. , 2026.

Dutch  b.1975- 

Oil on panel , 27 x 23 cm.

[luthienne]

We open each meeting by asking a simple question: What is keeping you alive today? This allows us to revel in the sometimes small motions that get us to the Next Thing. Yes, I did not want to get out of bed this morning, but there was one single long shard of sunlight that stumbled in through a tear in my curtains, and the warmth of it hitting my arm got me to that first hour of living. There was my dog, who, on the mornings I do not want to get out of bed, will rest silently at my feet and wait for me to slowly emerge from under the covers, and seeing her reminds me that I do, in fact, have only one lifetime in which I can love this animal. As far as I know, we will love each other only here, for a while, and that is worth seeing what I can make out of a few hours, even when I’m wrecked with despair.

Hanif Abdurraqib, In Defense of Despair

[typewriter-worries]

September 1, 1939, W.H. Auden

[ Text ID: We must love one another or die. ]

[nixscriptum]

[weltenwellen]

Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

[weltenwellen]

Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

[charitydingle]

Kedi 2016, dir. Ceyda Torun

[sovietpostcards]

"Drizzle" by Aleksey Makarov (1964)

[mournfulroses]

Martha Gellhorn, from a letter to William Walton featured in The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn

[havingapoemwithyou]

epistemic love poem by Jaswinder Bolina

[heavensghost]

from Autopsy by Donte Collins

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

I am asking them, as I am continually asking myself, to imagine a heart that feels a connection to the hearts of others, even others you do not know. I would like to think that this is what nudges me forward, more than some mythological concept of “hope.” In the silence of a room after the reading of a poem, when the only sounds are small gasps and sniffles, I can say to myself that we are all carrying a unique ache, or a unique memory, or a unique desire that the poem ignited. And I would like to know about it. I would like to know what few inches of the wretched world can be made into an adequate space for you to mourn, or to make a plate of food, or to dance in your living room, or to bury something you’ve finally decided to put down.

Hanif Abdurraqib, In Defense of Despair

[quotespile]

“I live in a small town by the sea, as I have all my life though for most of it it was by a warm green ocean a long way from here. Now I live the half-life of a stranger, glimpsing interiors through the television screen and guessing at the tireless alarms which afflict people I see in my strolls.”

— Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea

[mournfulroses]

Nikolay Punin, from a diary entry featured in The Diaries of Nikolay Punin: 1904 - 1953

[metamorphesque]

"I did not do what was written...", Henrik Edoyan (translated by metamorphesque)

[metamorphesque]

If you're curious to find out what the poem sounds like in Armenian (or what Armenian sounds like), here it is being read by a heavenly voice.