May 2012

Dreams and Dreaming #18

Quotation
"…I can't help what I want.

There is no such thing as a dream that comes true.

Every dream is already true the moment it is dreamed." -Suzanne Buffam, "Amor Fati"

Word Gumbo

Random Musing
This is a bit late - I'm not sure how I forgot to post about this earlier - but Word Gumbo published one of my poems in their last issue. You can read it here, just check out page seven.

Lustful

Quotations
"If they substituted 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"Once cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

"…Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness." -Robert Creeley, "The Rain"

"…'Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies…" -William Shakespeare, "Venus and Adonis"

For Faeries #2

Quotation
"For the fairies dwell only in the kingdom of Happiness; having no souls they cannot enter the kingdom of Sorrow." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

On Love #32

Quotation
"'I will not love — to love is to be a slave,' I said.
And the minute I said it I was ashamed of saying it — because I knew I had just said it to sound clever. I don't really believe that to love is to be a slave — not with Murrays, anyhow. But Dean took me quite seriously.
'Well, one must be a slave to something in this kind of a world,' said he. 'No one is free. Perhaps, after all, O daughter of the Stars, love is the easiest master — easier than hate — or fear — or necessity — or ambition — or pride.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

On Friendship #25

Quotation
"It was not for Rhoda she mourned — it was for the friendship that had been so dear to her." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

Happy Mother's Day!

Quotations
"'Isn't she the sweetest thing in the way av mothers?' asked Father Cassidy. 'I keep her to look at.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

"But the heart of the father is not as the heart of the mother." -L.M. Montgomery, "The Dream-Child," Further Chronicles of Avonlea

"'A mother is the best thing in the world — I realized that when I lost mine,' said Alan gently." -L.M. Montgomery, "Four Winds"

"And mother-like, Mrs. Jo forgot the threatened chastisement in tender lamentations over the happy scapegrace…" -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"Dan clung to her in speechless gratitude, feeling the blessedness of mother love, — that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it." -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"Without knowing it, he had been centralised, polarised in his mother. It was she who had kept him." -D.H. Lawrence, "Daughters of the Vicar"

"She thought her mother looked wonderfully beautiful with her back to the leafy window. There was something comforting in the sight of her that Linda felt she could never do without." -Katherine Mansfield, "Prelude"

You Can't Ignore History

Quotations
"'After all, we live in the present day! History is quite far back; it is said, of course, but it does seem silly. I never ever cared for history at school; I was glad when we came to the end of it.'
'And when, my dear, did you come to the end of history?'" -Elizabeth Bowen, "Ivy Gripped the Steps"

"'The happiest countries, like the happiest women, have no history,' said Dean."
-L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

             "Those angels of history are whispering, again,
That I'm the product of two people who should have known
Better…."
-Jay Hopler, "The Boxcars of Consolidated Rail Freight"

"'Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about it than I know already.'
'Why not?'
'Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only — finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands'.'"
-Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

On Beauty #3

Quotation
"'Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world'" -Richard Peck, A Long Way from Chicago

14, 15, 16

Quotations
"They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words." -Joan Didion, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem"

"Little, silly, dreamy, happy, ignorant Fourteen! Always thinking that something great and wonderful and beautiful lay in the years ahead. Quite sure that the "mountain purple" could be reached. Quite sure that dreams always came true. Foolish Fourteen, who yet had known how to be happy." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"If there's one thing you can't see at the age of fifteen, it's ahead." -Richard Peck, The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts

"'It's awful to be sixteen — simply awful.'
One didn't somehow, know where one was." -Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun

"Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail." -John Green, Looking for Alaska

On Happiness #36

Quotation
"She was at that moment as perfectly happy as any human being is ever permitted to be." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

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