I desired to see new things. I desired to experience volumes.
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
Quotes
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
No one who is good can ever be ugly.
—Roald Dahl, The Twits
Happiness is harder to put into words. It’s also harder to source, much more mysterious than anger or sorrow, which come to me promptly, whenever I summon them, and remain long after I’ve begged them to leave.
—David Sedaris, Calypso
To Friends at Home
To friends at home, the lone, the admired, the lost
The gracious old, the lovely young, to May
The fair, December the beloved,
These from my blue horizon and green isles,
These from this pinnacle of distances I,
The unforgetful, dedicate.
I was okay just a moment ago. I will learn how to be okay again.
—Nina LaCour, We Are Okay
What am I? A bit of dust embodied by an organism. What am I supposed to be doing on this earth? I have a choice. To suffer or to enjoy myself. Where will suffering get me? Nowhere. But I will have suffered. Where will enjoying myself get me? Nowhere. But I will have enjoyed myself.
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Where There’s a Wall
by Joy Kogawa
Where there’s a wall
there’s a way through a
gate or door. There’s even
a ladder perhaps and a
sentinel who sometimes sleeps.
There are secret passwords you
can overhear. There are methods
of torture for extracting clues
to maps of underground passages.
There are zeppelins, helicopters,
rockets, bombs, battering rams,
armies with trumpets whose
all at once blast shatters
the foundations.
Where there’s a wall there are
words to whisper by loose bricks,
wailing prayers to utter, birds
to carry messages taped to their feet.
There are letters to be written —
poems even.
Faint as in a dream
is the voice that calls
from the belly
of the wall.
“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of Xs between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those Xs . . .”
“And?”
“No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
That Book Broad 