We were leaving to deliver
Christmas presents when the tire blew
Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared
Down by a storm stood, limbs bared …
I want you.
—Louise Glück, “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson,” The First Four Books of Poems, 1968
How comic is simplicity in this double-dealing, quacking world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry, February 17, 1838
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
—Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968
A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1851
New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
—Robert Hass, “After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa,” Field Guide, 1973
“My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station. … In short” (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), “in short, my good man …”
“Oh, please,” I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, “do ask him where the King’s Road is. …”
“Ye’re in it,” said the aged face at the window.
—Edith Wharton, on traveling with Henry James, A Backward Glance, 1934
Consider a numerical metaphor for vampires. I call numbers like 2187 vampire numbers because they’re formed when two progenitor numbers 27 and 81 are multiplied together (27 * 81 = 2187). Note that the vampire, 2187, contains the same digits as both parents, except that these digits are subtly hidden, scrambled in some fashion. … These vampire numbers secretly inhabit our number system, but most have been undetected so far. I believe there are only six four-digit vampires in existence.
—Clifford A. Pickover, post on Usenet group sci.math, 1994
An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.
—Mark Twain, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” The Century, November 1885
Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form.
—Zadie Smith, “The House That Hova Built,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, September 2012
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
—Howard Nemerov, “Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry,” Sentences, 1980
Part of the pleasure for me with a George Price was always to go over it again, after that first dazzled look, and take in the mechanics: the framework of the hospital bed, under the sheet; the perfect empty glass on the table, with the perfect straw inside; Mrs. Glenhorn’s chin and mole and hat; and the line of the middle fold on the back of the nurse’s uniform, which ends, like all Price’s lines, in a point. He worked in wire and steel, I sometimes like to think, and then drew the sculpture onto the page.
—Roger Angell, “Congratulations! It’s a Baby!” The New Yorker, December 15, 1997
Hands, do what you’re bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.
—W. B. Yeats, “The Balloon of the Mind,” 1919
In Britain, the shadow at noon points towards stone-walled slopes of Derbyshire, steep cities of West Yorkshire, limestone solitudes of Weardale and Allendale. It points to the river estuaries of lowland Scotland, to the abrupt rampart of mountains, the fastnesses of the Cairngorms, the slate fields of Caithness, Orkney and Shetland beyond, and the remote Faroes where the wind blows the spume of the waterfall upwards. This is the route of the Arctic expeditions, the route not always retraced: Kirkwall, Trondheim, Tromsø, then the ice.
—Peter Davidson, The Idea of North, 2005
Arrived at the Grindenwald—dined—mounted again & rode to the higher Glacier—twilight—but distinct—very fine Glacier—like a frozen hurricane—Starlight—beautiful—but a devil of a path. … Passed whole woods of withered pines—all withered—trunks stripped & barkless—branches lifeless—done by a single winter—their appearance reminded me of me & my family.
—Lord Byron, Alpine journal, 1816
1. Caught on a side street in heavy traffic, I said to the cabbie, I should have walked. He replied, I should have been a doctor. 2. When can I get on the 11:33 I ask the guy in the information booth at the Atlantic Avenue Station. When they open the doors, he says. I am home among my people.
—Harvey Shapiro, “New York Notes,” How Charlie Shavers Died and Other Poems, 2001
I was adored once, too.
—Sir Andrew Aguecheek in William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, c. 1602
