There is nothing more hopeful than the delicate touch of rain amongst a thunderstorm of clouds.
Aleksey Tolstoy, from “It chanced”; A Book of Russian Verse (ed. by Cecil Bowra)
I am more a fool for thinking, wiser for feeling, as if my head had ever the chance of hiding this from me
Fallen angels are only humans in disguise, reincarnated to follow a new purpose - heal others in order to heal yourself.
0903, O.L. / Tumblr: @3lsahart / Peggy Toney Horton / September Days, In New England Fields and Woods, Rowland E. Robinson / Unknown / Alexander Theroux / Memory of Water, Reina María Rodríguez / September, Helen Hunt Jackson / Wallace Stegner / Instagram: @kjp / H. Stuart / Unknown / Unknown / Henry Rollins / Margaret Atwood / Diario Cuatro, DC de Oliveira / Virginia Woolf / Unknown / September 1st, D. E. / Beginning and ending with my death, Zeina Hashem Beck / The Whole Word and Other Stories, Ali Smith / Turquoise Silence, Sanober Khan / Victoria Erickson
What joy can be felt today? Frozen yet
In feigned sensibility, I ask myself...
“The moon is honey on the mouths of madmen”
— Guillaume Apollinaire, from Claire de Lune; Alcools: Poems (tr. by Donald Revell), 1913
i want to be good. (i want you to fear me.) i want to do what's kind, and gentle, and right. (i want to rip it all to pieces with my teeth.) i want to make the world a better place. (i want to shove my suffering down the throat of the world and watch it choke.)
We have lived and will live again in these moments, precious to every blink and eye that beat as one
Any quotes about night and stars, please? ✨
"The night is shaped like a howling wolf."
— Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness; from ‘Paths of the Mirror’, tr. Yvette Siegert
"Then, it being night, and the twin stars of Castor and Pollux just visible in the sky, I spoke of that tragedy, of two brothers whose love we might find unnatural, so stricken in grief when one was killed that the other, begging for his life again, accepted instead that for half the year one might live, and for the rest of the year the other, but never the two together. So it is for us, who while on earth in these suits of lead sense the presence of one we love, not far away but too far to touch."
— Jeanette Winterson, from 'Sexing the Cherry'
"The night is cold and delicate and full of angels"
— John Ashbery, Rivers and Mountains; from ‘The Ecclesiast’
"Oh starry starry night! This is how / I want to die."
— Anne Sexton, All My Pretty Ones; from ‘The Starry Night’
"Life is too short to be all daylight. Night is not less; it’s more."
—Jeanette Winterson, from 'Why I adore the night'
"…a strange night-time otherworld of darkness and starlight and the fine line between life and death."
— Katherine Clements, from 'The Coffin Path'
"But the Orphics say that black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros, whom some call Phanes, was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion."
—Robert Graves, from 'The Greek Myths: The Complete and Definitive Edition'
"That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word — for religion — so I go outside at night to paint the stars [...]"
— Vincent van Gogh
"Night. Such a beautiful word."
— Janet Fitch, from 'Chimes of a Lost Cathedral'
"Why shun darkness? / The night abounds with diamond drops."
— Forugh Farrokhzad, Asir (Captive); from 'On Loving', tr. Sholeh Wolpé
"Dear, though the night is gone, / Its dream still haunts to-day,"
— W. H. Auden, Selected Poems; from ‘Dear, though the night is gone’
"There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, "Consume me."
"I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams."
— Virginia Woolf, from 'The Waves'
"By day I am nothing, by night I am myself."
Fernando Pessoa, from 'The Book of Disquiet', tr. Margaret Jull Costa
"...the frozen glitter of stars, shattered glass on black silk..."
— Maggie O' Farrell, from 'Hamnet'
"I sometimes fancy that my body is made up of all the different stars. Leo’s in my chest; I’m sure it’s Leo because my heart roars."
— Jeanette Winterson, from 'Boating for Beginners'
"Night, the night again, the magisterial wisdom of the dark."
— Alejandra Pizarnik, A Musical Hell; from ‘Desire for the Word’, tr. Yvette Siegert
"If only at the midnight hour / You’d send me a greeting across the stars."
— Anna Akhmatova, Seventh Book; from Sweetbrier In Blossom; ‘In a Dream’, tr. Judith Hemschemeyer
"Under the shield of night, / let me unburden the moon."
— Forugh Farrokhzad, Reborn; from ‘Border Walls’, tr. Sholeh Wolpé
"The night snows stars and the earth creaks."
— Ted Hughes, Wodwo; from ‘The Howling of Wolves’
Be kind to yourself, you are deserving of love ♡
Historian, writer, and poet | proofreader and tarot card lover | Virgo and INTJ | dyspraxic and hypermobile | You'll find my poetry and other creative outlets stored here. Read my Substack newsletter Hidden Within These Walls. Copyright © 2016 Ruth Karan.
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