Marilyn Nelson Quotes & Sayings

What is gentlest in love is love's violence.
Losing yourself in love, you reach love's goal.
Love makes you suffer, as love makes you whole.
Love steals your everything and makes you rich.
Love is both meaningless and poetry.
Captured by love, by love you are set free. — Marilyn Nelson

Back when I was in college, people used to talk about the alienation of the artist, not ever quite fitting in any place. — Marilyn Nelson

After you kind of find your footing, sonnets are what comes easiest. — Marilyn Nelson

Many performance poets seem to believe that yelling a poem makes it comprehensible. They are wrong. — Marilyn Nelson

Miracles happen all the time. We're here, aren't we? — Marilyn Nelson

Since she seen Fortune head in that big pot Miss Lydia say that room make her feel ill, sick with the thought of boiling human broth. I wonder how she think it make me feel?
To dust the hands what use to stroke my breast; to dust the arms what hold me when I cried; to dust where his soft lips were and his chest what curved its warm against my back at night.
From the poem "Dinah's Lament" (15) — Marilyn Nelson

How sweet it is to let God purge our souls of ego and bitterness, and to have a little taste of heaven here on earth. — Marilyn Nelson

The filth hissed at us when we venture out
always in twos or threes, never alone
seems less a language spoken than one spat
in savage plosives, primitive, obscene:
a cavemob nya-nya, limited in frame
of reference and novelty, the same
suggestions of what we or they could do
or should, ad infinitum. — Marilyn Nelson

Writing in form is a way of developing your thinking - your thinking along with the tradition. In a way, it's not you alone, it's you in partnership. — Marilyn Nelson

There's more beauty on Earth than I can bear. — Marilyn Nelson

I had a lot of hatred, but I realized that kind of hate didn't do much. I had to start fueling myself with pride. We owe the ancestors that. So many of the souls who died in bondage just want us to recognize their struggle. — Marilyn Nelson

For much of my life - my sister and I have talked about this - when we moved, we just thought the world behind us disappeared, and all of the people, they just didn't exist any more. — Marilyn Nelson

I did not have to learn to love you: You were chosen for me. I knew that the first time I saw you.
- George Washington Carver — Marilyn Nelson

One of my graduate school professors, to whom I started sending poems when I started writing again after a 10-year hiatus, suggested I prepare a book manuscript which he could send to publishers for me. — Marilyn Nelson