Quotes by Louise Glck

“Tonight I saw myself in the dark window asthe image of my father, whose lifewas spent like this,thinking of death, to the exclusionof other sensual matters,so in the end that lifewas easy to give u...”

“(after many years) we were still at that first stage, stillpreparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;we could see this in one another; we had changed althoughwe never moved, an...”

“I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end, not a suspension: the senses wouldnt protect me. I caution you as I was never cautio...”

“Why love what you will lose?There is nothing else to love.”

“Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almondsurely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjectsto which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as ...”

“Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,the dreamed as well as the livedwhat could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?”

“Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray. When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move,my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that?Through the birches, I...”

“I think here I will leave you. It has come to seemthere is no perfect ending.Indeed, there are infinite endings.Or perhaps, once one begins,there are only endings.”

“I dont need your praiseto survive. I was here first, before you were here, beforeyou ever planted a garden.And Ill be here when only the sun and moonare left, and the sea, and the wide field.I will...”

“Gretel in Darkness:This is the world we wanted.All who would have seen us deadare dead. I hear the witch's crybreak in the moonlight through a sheetof sugar: God rewards.Her tongue shrivels into ga...”

“The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners hands. Not I suppose good news in a cult...”

“It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.”

“Living things don't all requirelight in the same degree. Some of usmake our own light: a silver leaflike a path no one can use, a shallowlake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.But yo...”

“A word drops into the mistlike a child's ball into high grasswhere it remains seductivelyflashing and glinting untilthe gold bursts are revealed to besimply field buttercups.Word/mist, word/mist: t...”

“As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles.She wasbuoyant by nature;she wanted to travel,go to the theater, go to museums.What he wantedwas to lie ...”

“We look at the world once, in childhood.The rest is memory”

“The Triumph Of AchillesIn the story of Patroclusno one survives, not even Achilleswho was nearly a god.Patroclus resembled him; they worethe same armor.Always in these friendshipsone serves the oth...”

“I am tired of having handsshe saidI want wings But what will you do without your handsto be human?I am tired of humanshe saidI want to live on the sun ”

“As I turned over the last page, a wave of sorrow enveloped me. Where had they all gone, these people who had seemed so real? To distract myself, I walked out into the night; instinctively, I lit a ...”

“Youre not a creature in body.You exist as the stars exist,participating in their stillness, their immensity.”