She Was A Poem Quotes & Sayings

Actually, the Sniper's sense of humor frightened Amy more than anything else. The parody of Carla's poem had been witty, the rudeness of Marvy's critique outlandish, and she was still, for some reason, focused on that "youse" in the Sniper's counterfeit email. "Youse" was like a spectral elbow to Amy's ribs. Dangerous, malevolent people should not be amusing. In order to be humorous, you had to have perspective, to be able to stand outside yourself and your own needs and grudges and fears and see yourself for the puny ludicrous creature you really are. How could somebody do that and still imagine himself entitled to harry, to wound, to kill? — Jincy Willett

She was a poem and a painting too. Everything she said sounded like a song, every silence was the music too. — Akshay Vasu

Nix," I said, and her name was a poem. She tilted her face up to the dawn; my lips met hers. She pressed close to me, and then there was no past, no future - only now. No her, no me. Only us. — Heidi Heilig

I couldn't figure out which of these ideas, if any, was at the core of the poem. But thinking about the grass and all the different ways you could se it made me think about all the ways I'd seen and mis-seen Margo. There was no shortage of ways to see her. I'd been focused on what had become of her, but now with my head trying to understand the multiplicity of grass and her smell from the blanket still in my throat, I realized that the most important question was who I was looking for. If "What is the grass?" has such a complicated answer, I thought, so, too, must "Who is Margo Roth Spiegelman?" Like a metaphor rendered incomprehensible by its ubiquity, there was room enough in what she had left me for endless imaginings, for an infinite set of Margos. — John Green

He stepped back, away from her. He shook his head in disbelief. "You know, I shouldn't try to go out with career women. You're all stricken. A guy can really tell what life has done to you. I do better with women who have part-time jobs."

"Oh, yes?" said Zoe. She had once read an article entitled "Professional Women and the Demographics of Grief." Or no, it was a poem: If there were a lake, the moonlight would dance across it in conniptions. She remembered that line. But perhaps the title was "The Empty House: Aesthetics of Bareness." Or maybe "Space Gypsies: Girls in Academe." She had forgotten. — Lorrie Moore

I think Miss Moore was right to cut "The Steeple-Jack" the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but she has cut too much ... The reader may feel like saying, "Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it's hers, isn't it?" No; it's much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody's, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David's left leg. — Randall Jarrell

I saw it, the first time I looked in her eyes. The language that lived within her. It was a language that has no name. It cannot be seen. It cannot be heard. All I can say is, her heart must beat the same rhythm as mine and mine must have known it. She was the greatest poem never written. The greatest song never sung. She was art. Before its creation. After its completion. Forever lovely. Timelessly perfect. This world is divided between feelers and thinkers. Spirits and minds. — Andrea Michelle

Why the ancient rishis selected the cow for apotheosis is obvious to me. The cow in India was the best comparison; she was the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made agriculture possible. The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in the gentle animal. She is the second mother to millions of mankind. Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The inextinguishable lesbian spark. You've surely heard about it? The one that was first ignited at Lesbos, because Sappho was so sad every time a young woman left the academy that she wrote her a poem. Fancy being sad because someone leaves! Perverted, that's what I call it. Don't you? — Gerd Brantenberg

...feel the fierce way desire
tourniquets itself around you and
clings

Clubland South of Market tweak-
chic trannies powder their noses from
bullet-shaped compacts and flick their forked
tongues like switchblades as they burn the night
down bleed day to night to day to

Mission sidewalks where pythons hide
twenty dollar balloons beneath their tongues which
get bartered in smiles quicker than a coke buzz and
tossed out through the cracks

Cottonmouth kisses
camouflage emotions and
strike with a vengeance
when he
wants and she
wants and they
want and I
won't

Genet was right, I suppose
when he wrote "The only way
to avoid the horror of horror is
to give in to it"
it's
the nature of
the economy of the
business it's the
nature of
things... — Clint Catalyst

Calico Kitty

My calico kitty
was painted and primed
she could prowl
the night away ~
without spending a dime... — Muse

We tend to make adjustments in our lives to get by, to survive. Sometimes we don't actually heal. We make changes. We deny. We mask. We cover up. We hide things. I could not change the fact Shellie committed suicide while I was away no more than I could change the fact she left me the poem. Eventually, I put the poem away to separate Shellie and the thoughts of her from my day-to-day life. I quit carrying a wallet because the wallet reminded me of the poem, and the poem reminded me I was helpless. — Scott Hildreth

That girl will rain destruction down on you and your ship. She is an albatross, Captain.
Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck, 'til some idiot killed it. (to Inara) Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint. — Joss Whedon

The Wasteland was an empty car park behind a long abandoned pub. Minah like it because she said it reminded her of the permanence of concrete in stark contrast to the entropy of humanity. Harrison had dubbed it the Wasteland after the TS Eliot poem, because it was full of disillusionment and despair. — Lili Wilkinson

They loved, and quarreled, and made up, and loved, and fought, and were true to each other and untrue. She made him the happiest man in the whole world and the most wretched, and after a few years she died, and then, when he was thirty, he died, too. But by that time Catullus had invented the love poem. — Tom Stoppard

The other gift - a book of poems, called, "The Cowardly Morning" - Waner put on Corinne's desk at the office, with a note saying, "This man is Coleridge and Blake and Rilke all in one, and more."
She didn't pick up the book again until she was in bed, late that night.
[...]
The first poem was the title poem. This time Corinne read it through aloud. But still she didn't hear it. She read it through a third time, and heard some of it. She read it through a fourth time, and heard all of it. It was the poem containing the lines:
'Not wasteland, but a great inverted forest
with all foliage underground.'
As though it might be best to look immediately for shelter, Corinne had to put the book down. At any moment the apartment building seemed liable to lose its balance and topple across Fifth Avenue into Central Park. She waited. Gradually the deluge of truth and beauty abated.
- The Inverted Forest (1947) — J.D. Salinger

New clothes left Sylvia reeling with happiness. For Sylvia, a shopping list was a poem. She always shopped alone - it suited her deliberate nature and the artistic joy with which she approached all things aesthetic. — Elizabeth Winder

Tomorrow she'd look up tattoo removal. They were doing big things with lasers now. When Cal was just a little more stable, she'd break up with him, gently, and then she'd begin her project of helping everybody she could help, and after that she'd head out on a great long journey to absolutely nowhere and write a gorgeous poem cycle steeped in heavenly lavender-scented closure and also utter despair, a poem cycle you could also actually ride for its aerobic benefits, and she'd pedal that fucker straight across the face of the earth until at some point she'd coast right off the edge, whereupon she'd giggle and say, Oh, shit. — Sam Lipsyte

You cannot hear a poem without it changing you," she told me. "They heard it, and it colonized them. It inherited them and it inhabited them, its rhythms becoming part of the way that they thought; its images permanently transmuting their metaphors; its verses, its outlook, its aspirations becoming their lives. Within a generation their children would be born already knowing the poem, and, sooner rather than later, as these things go, there were no more children born. There was no need for them, not any longer. There was only a poem, which took flesh and walked and spread itself across the vastness of the known. — Neil Gaiman

Taylor sighed. Going head-to-head with Sharpay on a school assignment was really beneath her. But the more Taylor considered it, the more she liked the idea of seeing her own poem in the paper. After all, the words "published poet" would look awfully good on those Ivy League college applications.

"You know what?" Taylor said.

"What?" Sharpay snapped.

Hands on hips, Taylor stepped forward till the girls were nose-to-nose. "Bring it on. — Alice Alfonsi

It was the poem containing the lines:
Not wasteland, but a great inverted forest
with all foliage underground.
As though it might be best to look immediately for shelter, Corinne had to put the book down. At any moment the apartment building seemed liable to lose its balance and topple across Fifth Avenue into Central Park. She waited. Gradually the deluge of truth and beauty abated. — J.D. Salinger

But he knew she was a star, and he, only human. He was never meant to reach the stars - he could only admire them from afar. — Timothy Joshua

There was a poem scribbled at the top of the Ashryver family tree, as though some student had dashed it down as a reminder while studying.
Ashryver Eyes
The fairest eyes, from legends old
Of brightest blue, ringed with gold
Bright blue eyes, ringed with gold. A strangled cry came out of him. How many times had he looked into those eyes? How many times had he seen her avert her gaze, that one bit proof she couldn't hide, from the king?
Celaena Sardothien wasn't in league with Aelin Ashryver Galathynius.
Celaena Sardothien was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, heir to the throne and righful Queen of Terrasen. — Sarah J. Maas

For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling vaguely guilty. — William S. Burroughs

There was a boy down at the stables." She laughed suddenly with her back comfortably nestled against Grant's chest. "Oh,Lord,he was a bit like Will, all sharp,awkward edges."
"You were crazy about him."
"I'd spend hours mucking out stalls and grooming horses just to get a glimpse of him.I wrote pages and pages about him in my diary and one very mushy poem."
"And kept it under your pillow."
"Apparently you've had a nodding aquaintance with twelve-year-old girls."
He thought of Shelby and grinned, resting his chin on the top of her head. Her hair smelled as though she'd washed it with rain-drenched wildflowers. "How long did it take you to get him to kiss you?"
She laughed. "Ten days.I thought I'd discovered the answer to the mysteries of the universe.I was a woman."
"No female's more sure of that than a twelve-year-old. — Nora Roberts

Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world. I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced, or felt something like what I have felt. And their poem gives me hope and courage, because I know that they survived, that their life force was strong enough to turn experience into words and shape it into meaning and then bring it toward me to share. — Gregory Orr

She was the only person in class who read her poem like it wasn't an assignment. She recited it like it was a living thing. Like something she was letting out. You couldn't look away from her as long as she was talking. — Rainbow Rowell

Byron published the first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a romanticized account of his wanderings through Portugal, Malta, and Greece, and, as he later remarked, "awoke one morning and found myself famous." Beautiful, seductive, troubled, brooding, and sexually adventurous, he was living the life of a Byronic hero while creating the archetype in his poetry. He became the toast of literary London and was feted at three parties each day, most memorably a lavish morning dance hosted by Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Caroline, though married to a politically powerful aristocrat who was later prime minister, fell madly in love with Byron. He thought she was "too thin," yet she had an unconventional sexual ambiguity (she liked to dress as a page boy) that he found enticing. They had a turbulent affair, and after it ended she stalked him obsessively. She famously declared him to be "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," which he was. So was she. — Walter Isaacson

Those lips that Love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said, 'I hate'
To me that languished for her sake,
But, when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet:
'I hate,' she altered with an end
That followed it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From Heaven to Hell is flown away.
'I hate' from hate away she threw
And saved my life, saying 'not you'. — William Shakespeare

Then her face tilted up to his, and he was looking into her eyes again. He had heard of drowning in a woman's eyes in some poem or story, and thought it ridiculous. He still thought it ridiculous, but understood it was perfectly possible, nonetheless. And she knew it. He saw concern in her eyes, perhaps even fear. — Stephen King

She saw the stubborn set of my face. "I've never felt blessed," I said. "There must be free will to choose. Do you know the poem about the two roads, and the one not taken?"
Yes. That has always amused me, because who created the two roads in the first place?"
It was a question I had never considered. — Tan Twan Eng

Pasquale considered his friend's face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee's face, like Michael Deane's face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality - that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor - and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she'd spent years "waiting for her movie to start," and that she'd almost missed out on her life waiting for it. — Jess Walter

Duncan kept his hand on Violet's and talked to her about terrible concerts he had attended back when the Quagmire parents were alive, and she was happy to hear his stories. Isadora began working on a poem about libraries and showed Klaus what she had written in her notebook, and Klaus was happy to offer suggestions. And Sunny snuggled down in Violet's lap and chewed on the armrest of her seat, happy to bite something that was so sturdy. — Lemony Snicket

I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something - a sculptor he would have been, no doubt - who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course, but the point I'm working round to is that there were a couple of lines that went, if I remember correctly: She starts. She moves. She seems to feel The stir of life along her keel. And what I'm driving at is that you couldn't get a better description of what happened to Gussie as I spoke these heartening words. His brow cleared, his eyes brightened, he lost that fishy look, and he gazed at the slug, which was still on the long, long trail with something approaching bonhomie. A marked improvement. — P.G. Wodehouse

Love poem to a stripper 50 years ago I watched the girls shake it and strip at The Burbank and The Follies and it was very sad and very dramatic as the light turned from green to purple to pink and the music was loud and vibrant, now I sit here tonight smoking and listening to classical music but I still remember some of their names: Darlene, Candy, Jeanette and Rosalie. Rosalie was the best, she knew how, and we twisted in our seats and made sounds as Rosalie brought magic to the lonely so long ago. now Rosalie either so very old or so quiet under the earth, this is the pimple-faced kid who lied about his age just to watch you. you were good, Rosalie in 1935, good enough to remember now when the light is yellow and the nights are slow. — Charles Bukowski

The title of the poem is: Heimweh (Homesick). The pervasive feeling expressed is of utter desolation, of wrenching pain felt by a person, who longs for every stone, bench, house - everything that was home. She felt that this poem put into words her own extreme longing for what used to be home. Then the letter continues: Nettchen, how long will this go on? How do you bear it? I have been here less than three months and I imagine that I will surely go out of my mind. Especially, in these unspeakably bright and white nights that overflow with longing. Sing sometimes, late at night, when you are alone: Poljushka4. Perhaps you will understand my frame of mind. — Pearl Fichman

When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty [ ... ] I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again. (p. 262) — Raymond Chandler

They say that Grandma Moses had several canvases going at the same time. Maybe it was a way for her to catch up with the time she missed while raising children and tending the farm. Like Grandma, I tend to have more than one poem or fiction going at a time. For me, it's just the way I think. — Marge Simon

(Page 288)
If my love were an ocean,
there would be no more land.
If my love were a desert,
you would see only sand.
If my love were a star-
late at night, only light.
And if my love could grow wings,
I'd be soaring in flight.
-I love poetry so getting to read something as tiny as this was very refreshing. I think I can relate to Hannah because what she is essentially saying is that she loves a lot to the point that if her love were an object in this world.. the entire world would be consumed by it just to show the amount of love she has. It got me confused because I found it kind of selfish of Hannah writing that poem because if she loved everone as deeply as her poems depict.. why would she leave them? — Jay Asher

In fact he was as
lovesick as a high schooler of an especially sensitive sort who wonders if he dare share a poem with his
beloved or whether she will laugh at him. He does read her the poem and her feminine capacity for
romanticism for a moment approaches his own and they are suffused in a love trance, a state that so
ineluctably peels back the senses making them fresh again whatever ages the lovers might be. — Jim Harrison

Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her ... and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being. — John Barth

rhyme jumped into Sienna's mind: Ring around the rosie. A pocketful of posies. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down. She used to recite the poem as a schoolgirl in England until she heard that it derived from the Great Plague of London in 1665. Allegedly, a ring around the rosie was a reference to a rose-colored pustule on the skin that developed a ring around it and indicated that one was infected. Sufferers would carry a pocketful of posies in an effort to mask the smell of their own decaying bodies as well as the stench of the city itself, where hundreds of plague victims dropped dead daily, their bodies then cremated. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down. Ring around the rosie. A pocketful of posies. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down. — Dan Brown

One of my greatest joys is poetry. I read it almost every day, and I've even taken a stab at writing some of my own. A poem I wrote for my mother when she was dying really helped me get through that hard time. — Maria Shriver

She was not a poet. She was a poem. She was about to snap in half. He thought his own poetry had made her la la la la love him. It was unbearable. — Deborah Levy

There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant, and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment. — Susanna Kearsley

Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, "God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good" ... She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me ... I threw away gold. That's a fact. That's a natural fact. — Stephen Adly Guirgis

Isabel never despaired, even though I think she knew everything that was going to happen, right from the beginning. There was a Walt Whitman poem she liked, especially the part that went - 'All goes onward and outward,/Nothing collapses/And to die is different from/What anyone supposes/And Luckier.' She tried to believe that, and it gave her some comfort, I know. She was very brave. Always. She hid her anguish and sadness, although I know she felt them. Because she wasn't losing only one person she loved - as we have. She was losing all of them. — Patricia Gaffney

It seems important to me that beginning writers ponder this - that since 1964, I have never had a book, story or poem rejected that was not later published. If you know what you are doing, eventually you will run into an editor who knows what he/she is doing. It may take years, but never give up. Writing is a lonely business not just because you have to sit alone in a room with your machinery for hours and hours every day, month after month, year after year, but because after all the blood, sweat, toil and tears you still have to find somebody who respects what you have written enough to leave it alone and print it. And, believe me, this remains true, whether the book is your first novel or your thirty-first. — Joseph Hansen

You're a poem?' I repeated.
She chewed her lower lip. 'If you want. I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose whose world was swallowed by the sea.'
'Isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?'
'What's your name?'
'Enn.'
'So you are Enn,' she said. 'And you are a male. And you are a biped. Is it hard to be three things at the same time? — Neil Gaiman

THE MOON was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
The likest I have known.
Her lips of amber never part;
But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
Were such her silver will!
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament,
The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
Her dimities of blue. — Emily Dickinson

Every poem is about a brave hero named Kregi," she said. "Every single one. He always has a steed, and we have to hear about the steed and the three different kinds of swords he carried and the color of the scarf he wore tied to his wrist and all the poor monsters he slew and then how he was a gentle man and true. For a mercenary, Tolya is disturbingly maudlin. — Leigh Bardugo

The other chief love- and how similar it was to science, and how different- was reading. As soon as she realized the figures on the page meant something- could be strung together as words, and then sentences, and then paragraphs- she was covetous of the whole system. It seemed a new universe to her. And it was. Everything opened up. Some stories were meant to inform, and others were meant to entertain. And then other stories were separate from those- this the young teacher did not tell her, it was something Angelene figured out on her own, the first year, when a man visited and read them a poem out of a tome of poems- that seemed crafted to relay some secret, and even more than that, some secret about herself. Angelene was mesmerized. What was available for her to know? What secrets did the world hold? Which secrets would be revealed to her through the soil, and which through words? — Amanda Coplin

Oxford

It is well that there are palaces of peace
And discipline and dreaming and desire,
Lest we forget our heritage and cease
The Spirit's work - to hunger and aspire:

Lest we forget that we were born divine,
Now tangled in red battle's animal net,
Murder the work and lust the anodyne,
Pains of the beast 'gainst bestial solace set.

But this shall never be: to us remains
One city that has nothing of the beast,
That was not built for gross, material gains,
Sharp, wolfish power or empire's glutted feast.

We are not wholly brute. To us remains
A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams,
A place of visions and of loosening chains,
A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.

She was not builded out of common stone
But out of all men's yearning and all prayer
That she might live, eternally our own,
The Spirit's stronghold - barred against despair. — C.S. Lewis

In the forest, I thought I'd made the wrong choice. I thought she had the Tennyson poem because it was a Rising poem, and I'd missed my chance to be in the rebellion with her. — Ally Condie

The Garden Under Snow
Now the garden is under snow
a blank page our footprints write on
clare who was never mine
but always belonged to herself
Sleeping Beauty
a crystalline blanket
this is her spring
this is her sleeping/awakening
she is waiting
everything is waiting
the improbable shapes of roots
my baby
her face
a garden, waiting. — Audrey Niffenegger

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her white kimono, writing in a notebook with an ink pen she dipped in a bottle. 'Never let a man stay the night,' she told me. 'Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.' The night magic sounded lovely. Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after. — Janet Fitch

I was in juvenile detention center, and I was in Rikers Island. And there was an anthology written by the inmates called 'The Pen,' and I - you know, I had a crush on a girl, and she left me when I was incarcerated. And I found this poem in this anthology that talked about having your heart broken and being incarcerated. — Lemon Andersen

A demon seduced an angel in the middle of the night
and they gave the stars a glimpse.
There was nothing casual about it,
it was tender skin and battle scars
breathless passion under storm clouds
a rapid river stream mirroring the moon light.
Until one day, he left her with nothing,
just a bruised heart and carved memories
iridescent wings chipped on the edges
heat under her skin, like an ember burning low.
I asked her, "What do you do after a love like that?"
She laughed.
And madness danced behind her eyes.
But she flew so high the world was jealous. — M.J. Abraham

DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem. — Audre Lorde

It was an itinerary for an alternate life. If things had gone according to my wife's vision, yesterday she would have hovered near me as I read this poem, watching me expectantly, the hope emanating from her like a fever: *Please get this. Please get me.* — Gillian Flynn

Karou was, simply, lovely. Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx. Beyond merely pretty, her face was vibrantly alive, her gaze always sparking and luminous, and she had a birdlike way of cocking her head, her lips pressed together while her dark eyes danced, that hinted at secrets and mysteries. — Laini Taylor

After she had gone through most of the songs she knew, she sang an old one that she said she had written herself. I'd love to cook a stew for you But I have no pot. I'd love to knit a scarf for you But I have no wool. I'd love to write a poem for you But I have no pen. "It's called 'I Have Nothing,'" Midori announced. It was a truly terrible song, both words and music. I listened to this musical mess with thoughts of how the house would blow apart in the explosion if the gas station caught fire. Tired of singing, Midori put her guitar down and slumped against my shoulder like a cat in the sun. "How did you like my song?" she asked. I answered cautiously, "It was unique and original and very expressive of your personality." "Thanks," she said. "The theme is that I have nothing." "Yeah, I kinda thought so. — Haruki Murakami

So I'm reading some poem by Louise . . . something, I forget her last name, but it's about Hades and the underworld, and I don't even notice that Paige has come up to my table until she says, 'Doesn't everyone want love?' And I'm thinking, wow, that's a pretty deep question, but then again Paige is really smart, and this is my chance to finally show her that I'm not just a dumb jock. So I say, 'I heard this theory once that love means your subconscious is attracted to someone else's subconscious.'"

"Very deep," Cade said.

"Exactly. And I'm feeling proud of myself for that one, until she points to the book and says, 'Oh, that wasn't a question. I was just quoting a line from the poem. — Julie James

She used to recite the poem as a schoolgirl in England until she heard that it derived from the Great Plague of London in 1665. Allegedly, a ring around the rosie was a reference to a rose-colored pustule on the skin that developed a ring around it and indicated that one was infected. Sufferers would carry a pocketful of posies in an effort to mask the smell of their own decaying bodies as well as the stench of the city itself, where hundreds of plague victims dropped dead daily, their bodies then cremated. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down. — Dan Brown

She didn't do anything at all
except arrived without warning
in the middle of the night
(right when I least expected it)

She walked by me, with a strut in her step
smelling like summer
causing me to turn my head
(even the leaves swayed her way)

All she did was look at me
with bright, curious eyes
filled with mirth and secrets
(as if an adventure was about to happen)

I tried not to think of her at all
not the curves of her body
or the stories that she told
(you knew there'd never be dull conversations)

By then, I couldn't walk away
I got caught up in her storm
without a care in the world
(I was a very good swimmer)

She was a hurricane who created her own sunshine. — M.J. Abraham

Pearl introduces an original story, in a form which was to become one of the most frequent in mediaeval literature, the dream-vision. Authors like Chaucer and Langland use this form, in which the narrator describes another world - usually a heavenly paradise - which is compared with the earthly human world. In Pearl, the narrator sees his daughter who died in infancy, 'the ground of all my bliss'. She now has a kind of perfect knowledge, which her father can never comprehend. The whole poem underlines the divide between human comprehension and perfection; these lines show the gap between possible perfection and fallen humanity which, thematically, anticipate many literary examinations of man's fall, the most well known being Milton's late Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost. — Ronald Carter

Sigh. Here's another fine woman that historians can't believe was real. Of course she was real. Not only is there a splendid Chinese poem called "The Ballad of Mulan", there is also n excellent cartoon by Disney. — Sandi Toksvig

That poem was not by me. It is among the things which quite overpower me; I have never been able to read it without tears coming to my eyes; it sounds like a voice for which I have been waiting and waiting since childhood. The poem is by my friend Lou ... She is as shrewd as an eagle and brave as a lion, and yet still a very girlish child, who perhaps will not live long. — Friedrich Nietzsche

She was not a poet. She was a poem. — Deborah Levy

And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't. — Jennifer Donnelly