Gwyneth Lewis Quotes & Sayings

Creu Gwir fel gwydr o ffwrnais awen Creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration — Gwyneth Lewis

The wordlessness of depression is a galling experience. You can't phone your friends, writing an e-mail is beyond you, you can't put pen to paper. The disease is a crash course in meaninglessness, lack of structure, the collapse of form. — Gwyneth Lewis

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Today set sail like a cruising ship
taking us with it, so we waved goodbye
to the selves that we were yesterday
and left them ashore like a memory
while we launched out on the open sea,
were travelling! The breeze grew stiff
so we grabbed the railings,tasted the surf
as the sky came toward us, the equator noon
a place to pass us, while the tropics of tea
swung over us and straight on by
as time kept sailing and we hung on,
admiring the vistas of being away
while the shadows died down from the flames of day
and we coasted around a long headland of sky
and into night's port while, out in the bay
tomorrow called out like a ringing buoy. — Gwyneth Lewis

When you're in the middle of your depression, pay good attention to it, because, tended carefully, you never know where it might lead you. — Gwyneth Lewis

The opposite of depression isn't feeling happy but being fully alive, however painful — Gwyneth Lewis

Cognitive therapists focus on getting patients to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. Being positive has become rather a fetish. A more radical tactic would be to abolish the need for evaluation and just accept the glass as it is, whether it be cracked or brimming. — Gwyneth Lewis

What happened? Who killed me? — Gwyneth Lewis

Your positive thinker may do well in suburbia but I'd rather be with a lucid depressive in the Arctic, where survival depends on precision and not fooling yourself about your chances on the ice. — Gwyneth Lewis

The whole thing starts with a single knot
and needles. A word and pen. Tie a loop
in nothing. Look at it. Cast on, repeat
the procedure till you have a line
that you can work with.
It's a pattern made of relation alone,
my patience, my rhythm, till empty bights
create a fabric that can be worn,
if you're lucky and practised. It's never
too late
to pick up dropped stitches ...
(from "How to Knit a Poem") — Gwyneth Lewis

Poetry has acquired a fluffy image, which is totally at odds with its real nature. It's not pastel colours, but blood-red and black. If you don't obey it as a force in your life, it will tear you to pieces. — Gwyneth Lewis

The crucial thing here is not to listen to your mind. Your mind has got its basic communication lines crossed. If you try to fly in this flak you will shoot down your own aircraft. Keep close to yourself ... fly under your own radar. Let the anti-aircraft guns discharge their ammunition into the plaid sky. Steal home, undetected even by yourself. Whatever you do, in this state, don't think. — Gwyneth Lewis