Seraj Barakat Quotes & Sayings

When people talk about poetry as a project, they suggest that the road through a poem is a single line. When really the road through a poem is a series of lines, like a constellation, all interconnected. Poems take place in the realm of chance, where the self and the universal combine, where life exist. I can't suggest to you that going through a line that is more like a constellation than a road is easy - or that the blurring of the self and the universal doesn't shred a poet a little bit in the process. The terrain of a poem is unmapped (including the shapes of the trees along the constellation-road). A great poet knows never to expect sun or rain or cold or wind in the process of creating a poem. In a great poem all can come to the fore at once. It would be worse yet, if none are there at all. — Dorothea Lasky

Kiss someone, then," I say. "Not anyone. — Cath Crowley

Many writers will get a contract by selling chapters and outlines or something like that. I wrote the entire novel, and when it was all finished, I would give it to my agent and say, 'Well, here's a novel; sell it if you can.' And they would do that, and it was good because I never had anyone looking over my shoulder. — George R R Martin

I'm a pretty good drawer. I have trouble painting because you literally have to wait for the paint to dry. I'm disciplined, but I'm not patient. — Douglas Coupland

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people. — James Madison

Yet understanding one's own nature is often a first step to personal growth. All this psychological crap was making me irritable. — Faith Hunter

you ask your heart why it is always hurting. it says 'this is the only thing you will allow me to say to you. the only feeling you are willing to feel. — Nayyirah Waheed

And sharp-faced, like Boris, but with an evil red-rimmed gaze and tiny, brownish sawteeth. He made me think of a rabid fox. — Donna Tartt

I never heard the word 'compromise' used. So I'm starting to believe that these terms only come into play to try and force Republicans to do what the Democrats want. — Allen West

Your words will either give you joy or give you sorrow, but if they were spoken without regret, they give you peace. — Shannon L. Alder