"I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can."
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Quote collection
Jack Gilbert quotes (page 1 of 2)
35 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The heart lies to itself because it must."
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"We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world."
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"We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars."
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"Being alive is so extraordinary I don’t know why people limit it to riches, pride, security—all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the house. And they have to get a car. You can’t see anything from a car. It’s moving too fast. People take vacations. That’s their reward—the vacation. Why not the life?"
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"I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman's heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don't have a name for."
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"I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph."
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"Everyone forgets Icarus also flew."
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"Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her."
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"When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?' 'Silence,' he finally told me."
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"We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil."
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"Why do so manysettle for so little? I don't understand why they're not greedy for what's inside them."
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"We are resident inside with the machinery, a glimmering spread throughout the apparatus. We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones. The flesh is a neighborhood, but not the life."
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"We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones."
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"We are all burning in time, but each is consumed at his own speed."
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"WAKING AT NIGHT The blue river is grey at morning and evening. There is twilight at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end."
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"Duende I can't remember her name. It's not as though I've been in bed with that many women. The truth is I can't even remember her face. I kind of know how strong her thighs were, and her beauty. But what I won't forget is the way she tore open the barbecued chicken with her hands, and wiped the grease on her breasts."
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"I like ornament at the right time, but I don't want a poem to be made out of decoration ... When I read the poems that matter to me, it stuns me how much the presence of the heart-in all its forms-is endlessly available there. To experience ourselves in an important way just knocks me out. It puzzles me why people have given that up for cleverness. Some of them are ingenious, more ingenious than I am, but so many of them aren't any good at being alive."
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"Fame is a lot of fun, but it's not interesting. I loved being noticed and praised, even the banquets. But they didn't have anything that I wanted. After about six months, I found it boring."
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"Are the angels of her bed the angels who come near me alone in mine? Are the green trees in her window the color is see in ripe plums? If she always sees backward and upside down without knowing it what chance do we have? I am haunted by the feeling that she is saying melting lords of death, avalanches, rivers and moments of passing through, And I am replying, "Yes, yes. Shoes and pudding."
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