Posts tagged "perseverance" — Page 4

Required Course

All writers look for a way out of writing.
But writing is like serving a jail sentence—
you’re not free until you’ve done your time
on the rock-heap.
~Paul Theroux

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Sing at Unnatural Hours in the Presence of Artificial Light

There are times I have to remind myself
that a bridge is a way to travel over water
not a diving board for suicides. That airports

aren’t just places for departures, but places
for arrivals, and hospitals aren’t only
where we go to die, but where we’re born.

I’d like to think not a single bomb
was dropped on anyone today, not a single
person was diagnosed with cancer.

Somewhere someone misses you.
A friend remembers something
you once said. Somewhere someone

thinks you’re beautiful. A man holds
a guitar in his hands. A couple dances behind
the living room couch mouthing words

they’ve longed to share with each other.
At this hour only astronomers
and insomniacs find natural,

as the blazing red lights of an ambulance
flicker fear past the window,
I have to remind myself:

it doesn’t always mean somebody’s
dying in there, sometimes it means
somebody’s being saved.

~Clint Margrave

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Sovereignty

I only know that I will never again trust my life,
my future, to the whims of men, in companies or out.
Never again will their judgment have anything to do
with what I think I can do.
~Toni Morrison, Paris Review Interview

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The Love of Practice

Think of writing practice as loving arms
you come to illogically and incoherently.
~Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

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My Blue Period

So you mustn’t be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus Prim, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall…

In you, dear Mr. Kappus Prim, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like some one who is recovering; for perhaps you are both.

~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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