Larry Levis Quotes & Sayings

Then think of fire, It's laughter, the music of splintering beams and glass, The flames reaching through the second story of a house almost as if to -mistakenly- rescue someone who left you years ago. It is so American, fire. So like us. It's desolation. And it's eventual, brief triumph. — Larry Levis

The moment of writing is not an escape ... it is only an insistence, through the imagination, upon human ecstasy, and a reminder that such ecstasy remains as much a birthright in this world as misery remains a condition of it. — Larry Levis

This story has no point but stillness itself... — Larry Levis

My love and I are inventing a country, which we can already see taking shape, as if wheels were passing through yellow mud. But there is a problem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw and begin flooding. If we put the river on the border, there will be trouble. If we forget about the river, there will be now way out. There is already a sky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke. Birds have flown into it, too. Each evening more trees fill with their eyes, and what they see we can never erase. — Larry Levis

Style, after all, is a kind of humor,
Something truly beneath contempt... — Larry Levis