Quotes by Jack Gilbert

“We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

“We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must havethe stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthlessfurnace of this world. To make injustice the only...”

“I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end.”

“The heart is a foreign country whose language none of us is good at.”

“We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.”

“The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day. Qu...”

“DuendeI can't remember her name.It's not as though I've been in bedwith that many women.The truth is I can't even rememberher face. I kind of know how strongher thighs were, and her beauty.But what...”

“I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.”

“The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the or...”

“Once she said the world was an astonishing animal: light was its spirit and noise was its mind. That it was composed to feed on honor, but did not.”

“How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.”

“Michiko Nogami (19461982) Is she more apparent because she is notanymore forever? Is her whiteness more whitebecause she was the color of pale honey?A smokestack making the sky more visible.A dead ...”

“Suddenly this defeat.This rain.The blues gone grayAnd the browns gone grayAnd yellowA terrible amber.In the cold streetsYour warm body.In whatever roomYour warm body.Among all the peopleYour absenc...”

“We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.”

“It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be ...”

“I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave e...”

“When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?' 'Silence,' he finally told me.”

“We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the...”

“To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboatcomes slowly out and then goes back is truly worthall the years of sorrow that are to come.”

“Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But theres music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her.”