Kamienska Quotes & Sayings

My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence. — Anna Kamienska

Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written. — Oscar Wilde

Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give they a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling court, and let me have but an unfettered press. I will defy them to encroach a hair's breadth upon the liberties of England. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Even a painful longing is some form of presence. — Anna Kamienska

To write incorporeal poems, almost without words. To approximate the impossible, where art disappears and the Word becomes. — Anna Kamienska

Tell me what's the difference
between hope and waiting
because my heart doesn't know
It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting
It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope — Anna Kamienska

I have searched all night and day for new and better words that could express my feelings and fear for the people of this country. I found no new words. I only have no hope-filled insight to deliver. I only have this warning to all Americans: Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it will one day do to us all. — Killer Mike

No home anymore. Nowhere to return. My house is a ruin, a cemetery. You may yearn for the grave, but just try living there. — Anna Kamienska

Please don't let it be another cop. I'm outta bail money. Wait a minute ... I could sell you on eBay and make a killing. (Mark)
Not in my current condition. You'd have to sell Caleb or Madaug. I'm sure there's someone willing to buy two perfectly good white boys. (Nick) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It's not words, so much, just my mind going blank and thoughts reaching up up up, me wishing I could climb through the ceiling and over the stars until I can find God, really see God, and know once and for all that everything I've believed my whole life is true, and real. Or, not even everything. Not even half. Just the part about someone or something bigger than us who doesn't lose track. I want to believe the stories, that there really is someone who would search the whole mountainside just to find that one lost thing that he loves, and bring it home. — Sara Zarr

I have hands full of this radiance. It flows through my fingers. It doesn't diminish. — Anna Kamienska

Where your pain is, there your heart lies also. — Anna Kamienska

Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving. — Anna Kamienska

Letters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cell's wall. To write like that. — Anna Kamienska

We cling to words like drowning men to straws. But still we drown, we drown. — Anna Kamienska

Can you think yourself to death? — Anna Kamienska

I felt like a hunted animal, followed constantly, waiting to be killed. — Richard Jewell

It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed. — Andrew Greeley

Poetry is a presentiment of the truth. — Anna Kamienska

Lack of Faith"

Yes,
even when I don't believe -
there is a place in me
inaccessible to unbelief,
a patch of wild grace,
a stubborn preserve,
impenetrable,
pain untouched by the sleeping body,
music that builds its nest in silence. — Anna Kamienska

We do not ask life what the meaning of life is. Life asks us, what is the meaning of your life. And life demands our answer. — Viktor E. Frankl

I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that's all. — Anna Kamienska

I returned
to confirm
there can be no return. — Anna Kamienska

We create eternity out of crumbs of time. — Anna Kamienska

The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That's the way a poet looks for words. With muscles, gestures. — Anna Kamienska

I've learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what's unsaid, what's underneath. Understanding on another level of being. — Anna Kamienska

Tell me what's the difference — Anna Kamienska

I think it is not very difficult to discern by the duties and converses of Christians, what frames their spirits are under. Take a Christian in a good frame, and how serious, heavenly, and profitable, will his converses and duties be! what a lovely companion is he during the continuance of it! — John Flavel

Nature, not human activity, rules the climate. — Fred Singer

I am that which lies beyond time. Like a melody, which sounds completely only after the last note is played. — Anna Kamienska

There are things better left untouched by words ... — Anna Kamienska

This morning I suddenly catch myself: I'm not there, I'm so lost in thought, I don't know what's going on around me. Can you think yourself to death? — Anna Kamienska

I'm moved by everything broken and crippled. Since that's how we really are. — Anna Kamienska

I received the grace of shadows. The grace of remaining in the dark.
- From A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook — Anna Kamienska

I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself. — Anna Kamienska

When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered. — Ivor Novello

The immense light. A state of inner emergency and waiting ... This luminosity does not negate reason or any rational sense. It simply exists. A kind of poetic sensibility open to the world. To everything
grand and small. — Anna Kamienska

I don't write poetry when I wish, I write when I can't, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut. — Anna Kamienska

During the sleepless hours of the night
a thought came to me that seemed important. I got up in the dark and wrote it down. In the morning I read: 'I went looking for loneliness. But it found me. — Anna Kamienska