Millay Quotes & Sayings

What'd you wish?"
"I can't tell you that!" I say indignantly.
"Why not?"
"Because it won't come true." Do I really need to say this? I'm pretty sure it's a given in wish situations.
"Bullshit."
"It's the rule," I insist.
"It's only the rule with birthday cakes and shooting stars, not pennies in fountains. — Katja Millay

Now - a profanity-spewing guttersnipe being dragged out of a crack house on Cops. I — Katja Millay

Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Let us not forget such words, and all they mean, as hatred, bitterness, and rancor greed, intolerance, bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to man, his right to be himself and free. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Personally, I'd rather shove a cactus up my ass, but apparently that option isn't on the table, so I might as well just rip the Band-Aid off now and get it over with. — Katja Millay

Night falls fast. Today is the past. — John Green

Time, That Is Pleased to Lengthen out the Day

Time, that is pleased to lengthen out the day
For grieving lovers parted or denied,
And pleased to hurry the sweet hours away
From such as lie enchanted side by side,
Is not my kinsman; nay, my feudal foe
Is he that in my childhood was the thief
Of all my mother's beauty, and in woe
My father bowed, and brought our house to grief.
Thus, though he think to touch with hateful frost
Your treasured curls, and your clear forehead line,
And so persuade me from you, he has lost;
Never shall he inherit what was mine.
When Time and all his tricks have done their worst,
Still will I hold you dear, and him accurst. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:
Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is Not All
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't dress this way because I like it so much or because I want people to stare at me in general. But people are going to stare at me for the wrong reasons anyway, and if they are going to stare at me for the wrong reasons, then at least I should get to pick them. — Katja Millay

I don't really care what people say about me. I'm fine with lies and rumors. It's the truth I don't want being told. — Katja Millay

And girls always want to change the rules in the middle of the game. You can't change the rules and think everyone else is just going to keep playing. I know what her hair smells like, but I can't get close enough to press my face into it. I know how soft her skin is on every part of her body, but I can't touch it. I know what she tastes like, but I can't kiss her, I'm not allowed anymore. So why should I torture myself with being around her, just so I can say we're still friends? — Katja Millay

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad. — Erica Jong

Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The breath of dying lilies haunted the twilight air. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

But the rain Is full of ghosts tonight — Edna St. Vincent Millay

It may be said of me by Harper & Brothers, that although I reject their proposals, I welcome their advances. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The undercurrent of my every thought:
To seek you, find you, have you for my own. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Emilia," he says, and when he does, it warms me to my soul. "Every day you save me. — Katja Millay

We're like mysteries to one another. Maybe if I can solve him and he can solve me, we can explain each other. Maybe that's what I need. Someone to explain me. — Katja Millay

Seeing Josh is my homecoming. I didn't tell him I was coming back. He doesn't say anything when he sees me, and neither do I, because the fact that I'm here is an answer. We just look at each other and speak in the silence like we always have and no one interrupts the conversation. — Katja Millay

So up I got in anger, And took a book I had, And put a ribbon on my hair To please a passing lad. And, "One thing there's no getting by
I've been a wicked girl," said I; But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It's only that. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

On and on eternally
Shall your altered fluid run,
Bud and bloom and go to seed;
But your singing days are done — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The only people I really hate are servants. They're not really human beings at all. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's the Josh Bennett equivalent of tattooing her name across my chest. — Katja Millay

The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here - but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely.
She that knew not where to hide,
Is gone again like a jeweled fish from the hand, Is lost on every side.
Mute,mute, I make way to the garden, Thither where she last was seen;
The heavy foot of the frost is on the flags there,
Where her light step has been.
Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely,
Gone again on every side,
Lost again like a shining fish from the hand Into the shadowy tide. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Good morning, Sunshine. — Katja Millay

I screamed, and
lo!
Infinity
Came down and settled over me — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I haven't started counting yet. I wonder if it's just me or if it's like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they've been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren't counting anymore, and you don't even know when you stopped. That's the moment they're gone. — Katja Millay

The heart grows weary after a little Of what it loved for a little while. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Most Wicked Words!-Forbear to Speak Them Out

Most wicked words!-forbear to speak them out.
Utter them not again; blaspheme no more
Against our love with maxims learned from Doubt:
Lest Death should get his foot inside the door.
We are surrounded by a hundred foes;
And he that at your bidding joins our feast,
I stake my heart upon it, is one of those,
Nor in their councils does he sit the least.
Hark not his whisper: he is Time's ally,
Kinsman to Death, and leman of Despair:
Believe that I shall love you till I die;
Believe; and thrust him forth; and arm the stair;
And top the walls with spikes and splintered glass
That he pass gutted should again he pass. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

One things there's no getting by,
I've been a wicked girl,
Says I ...
But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad ! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning there remains
No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,
This be our solace: that it was not said
When we were young and warm and in our prime,
Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

My mother's hope is a weapon. — Katja Millay

Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart. I took your thrust, whereby I since am slain, And I lie disheveled in the grass apart, A sodden thing bedrenched by tears and rain. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I live in the world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shape-shifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck. I am pressed so heard against the earth by the weight of reality that some days i wonder how am i still able to lift my feet to walk. — Katja Millay

Along my body, waking while I sleep,
Sharp to the kiss, cold to the hand as snow,
The scar of this encounter like a sword — Edna St. Vincent Millay

L am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

[L]ife isn't one thing after another, it's the same thing over and over — Edna St. Vincent Millay

She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life must go on, Though good men die. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Time can make soft that iron wood. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Relaxing me from head to feet
Love masters me, the bitter sweet
O'er thy limbs breathing;
Yea, Eros now, the god born blind
Sweeps my soul like the mountain wind
Through the oaks seething. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

And if my Sea od Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him.
I don't say anything right away, because I just want one minute to look at him before I give him my last secret.
And then I tell him.
Your garage. — Katja Millay

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,
Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
...
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things
...
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,
I know not how such things can be!
I breathed my soul back into me. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shrug. I'm an excellent shrugger. It's rivaled only by my ability to nod. — Katja Millay

I'm wondering if I'm allowed to hate Josh Bennett, because I'm thinking I might start. — Katja Millay

11.

If it should rain --(the sneezy moon
Said: Rain)--then I shall hear it soon
From shingles into gutters fall...
And know of what concerns me, all:

The garden will be wet till noon--
I may not walk-- my temper leans
To myths and legends--through the beans
Till they are dried-- lest I should spread
Diseases they have never had.

I hear the rain: it comes down straight.
Now I can sleep, I need not wait
To close the windows anywhere.

Tomorrow, it may be, I might
Do things to set the whole world right.
There's nothing I can do tonight. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I've scared, offended or made everyone uncomfortable enough to stay away. Mission accomplished. — Katja Millay

Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots, Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Wonderful. Last night's dinner, the charred remains of my dignity, and apparently, now, my undergarments, too. What else did I leave on Josh Bennett's bathroom floor? — Katja Millay

into the darkness they go, the wise & the lovely — Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's all my fault! Everything is my fault and no one knows it more than me. We're all in hell and I'm the one that put us here. — Katja Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Lost in Hell,-Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

And if there is any part of my heart left to break, it breaks with his confusion. — Katja Millay

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

A wind with a wolf's head
Howled about our door,
And we burned up the chairs
And sat upon the floor. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life must go on; I forget just why. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Music, my rampart and my only one. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

People who have never been through any sort of shit always assume that they know how you should react to having your life destroyed. And the people who have been through shit think you're suppose to deal with it the exact same way they did. As if there's a playbook for surviving hell. — Katja Millay

Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I was a lost cause a long time ago. — Katja Millay

I have a black-belt in self-pity. I was an expert in the field. Still am. It's a skill you never forget. — Katja Millay

Need we say it was not love, Now that love is perished? — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'd watch her, amazed at just how much a person could accomplish fueled by tea and regret. — Katja Millay

Dust in an urn long since, dispersed and dead
Is great Apollo; and the happier he — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'd also believe that all teenage boys go around calling girls baby, because apparently that's the express train to romance. — Katja Millay

Girls always want to change the rules in the middle of the game. — Katja Millay

Plus, once he did the requisite double-take and recognized me, he'd probably beat the crap out of any guy who looked at me in all my Snow White meets Frederick's of Hollywood glory. — Katja Millay

Good Morning, Sunshine! Josh F**king Bennett. By now, I'm pretty sure that if I were to find his birth certificate that is exactly what it would say. — Katja Millay

You know I meant it. I am human. And male. And not remotely blind. Do you want me to say it again? You are distractingly, even if-that-is-not-a-real-word pretty. You are so pretty that I bullied Clay Whitaker into drawing me a picture of you so I could look at you when you aren't around. You are so pretty that one of these days I'm going to lose a finger in my garage because I can't concentrate with you so close to me. You are so pretty that I wish you weren't so I wouldn't want to hit every guy at school who looks at you, especially my best friend. — Katja Millay

Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note
In me a beauty that was never mine,
How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line ... — Edna St. Vincent Millay

And as much as I'm telling her to stay here, I still want her to choose to come with me. To say fuck sanity and healing and closure. To say that I am the only thing she needs to be well and whole and alive. But we both know that's not true. — Katja Millay

It's little I know what's in my heart,What's in my mind it's little I know,But there's that in me must up and start,And it's little I care where my feet go. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

What is she to him?" I try not to sound jealous or like I'm fishing for information, but I am on both counts. "She," he says, looking at my chest, because he is still Drew, before pulling his gaze up to my eyes, "is a poor man's Sunshine." I — Katja Millay

There is no shelter in you anywhere. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

There are so many things that can break you if there's nothing to hold you together. — Katja Millay

It seems like the more my body healed, the more fractured my mind became, and there aren't enough wires and screws to fix he breaks in it. — Katja Millay

If eavesdropping on someone else's nightmares is supposed to make me feel better, I'd rather stay feeling like shit. I don't think telling them about my horror story would do me any good. And besides, I'm not even supposed to have a story to tell. - Nastya Kashnikov — Katja Millay

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

People believe in God because they don't believe in themselves. They need something else to depend on or to blame instead of taking responsibility for their own shit - crap, excrement, waste, mistakes, faults. — Katja Millay

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it. — Edna St. Vincent Millay