Quotes by Jill Alexander Essbaum

About Jill Alexander Essbaum:

Jill Alexander Essbaum is an American poet, writer, and professor. Her most recent collections are the full-length manuscripts Harlot (No Tell Motel, 2007) and Necropolis (neoNuma Arts, 2008). Essbaum's poetry features puns, wordplay and dark humor, often mixed with religious and erotic imagery. She currently teaches at the University of California Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center in the Masters of Creative Writing Graduate Program. Essbaum's debut novel, Hausfrau was published March 2015 (Random House).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

But there are times to talk to the dead, times when the dead want to talk.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Ghosts,” Doktor Messerli continued, “aren’t always the spirits of the human dead bound to the earth. A ghost can be the residual feeling that follows an act you have accomplished but feel bad about. Or the act itself. Something you’ve been or...

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Anna’s conclusions were these: That fire is beautifully cruel. That fusion occurs only at a specific heat. That blood, in fact, can boil. That the dissolution of an affair is an entropic reaction, and the disorder it tends toward is flammable. That...

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Let’s get you one, Anna.” “A lover?” Edith rolled her eyes. “No. A fucking houseplant. Yes, a lover.” Edith smirked. “It’ll cheer you up!

Jill Alexander Essbaum

There is a correlation between the severity of a person’s moods and a lack of self-knowledge.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Anna loved and didn’t love sex. Anna needed and didn’t need it. Her relationship with sex was a convoluted partnership that rose from both her passivity and an unassailable desire to be distracted.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

The deepest sleep is meant only for children and perfect fools.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Solitude was her anchor. A familiar misery, and anymore the safest, most sensible approach.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Bored women join clubs and volunteer. Sad women have affairs.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Whores, Anna once read, make the very best wives. They are accustomed to the varying moods of men, they keep their broken hearts to themselves, and easy women always ease through grief.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

...no pain ever takes full leave of its person. That pain is greedy and doesn't give ground. That a body remembers what hurts it and how. Old pains get swallowed by new pains. But newer pains always follow suit.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Four simple chambers. A thousand complicated doors. One of them is yours.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Is that not always the case? Given any two people in a relationship, one will always love more, the other less. Right?

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Author Bio

  • NameJill Alexander Essbaum
  • DescriptionAmerican poet, academic
  • Born1971
  • CountryUnited States Of America