Russell Edson Quotes & Sayings

It is very difficult to stop feeling. — Russell Edson

There's only the writing, which I admit to knowing very little about. But then it's probably best not to know. It allows one to work without expectation. Best to let the poem do the thinking while we concern ourselves with what's called the personal life. — Russell Edson

I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly
hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on the head,
therefore I am.
No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.
So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.
You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think, not hit,
cried the man.

. . . I think, therefore I am, said the man.
I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets
hit, said the man's mother.
But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he
could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am,
and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it . . . — Russell Edson

As a child I had wanted to become an automobile, but then I grew up to be thirty years old. — Russell Edson

She fell in love with her doctor's stethoscope, the way it listened to her heart. — Russell Edson

The best advice I can give is to ignore advice. Life is too short to be distracted by the opinions of others. — Russell Edson

Perhaps I should kiss the face of the kitchen clock for luck. Perhaps its little hands with rapture would encircle my neck and we might be happy. I am sure happiness is not too far away — Russell Edson

Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall....

Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows'
tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips
in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given
to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which
saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in
vanity....

Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,
whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man
who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for
dessert served himself a chilled fedora.... — Russell Edson

If one cannot accept failure and scorn, how is he to make his art? It's like wanting to go to heaven without dying. — Russell Edson

So Mr Brain opened his mouth to let a moonbeam into his head. — Russell Edson