Quotes by Linda Pastan

About Linda Pastan:

Linda Pastan is an American poet of Jewish background. From 1991–1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. She is known for writing short poems that address topics like family life, domesticity, motherhood, the female experience, aging, death, loss and the fear of loss, as well as the fragility of life and relationships.
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

What we want is never simple. We move among the things we thought we wanted: a face, a room, an open book and these things bear our names -- now they want us. But what we want appears in dreams, wearing disguises. We fall past, holding out our arms a...

Linda Pastan

I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]

Linda Pastan

To be the other woman is to be a season that is always about to end, when the air is flowered with jasmine and peach, and the weather day after day is flawless, and the forecast is hurricane.

Linda Pastan

You can never miss your fate," Eleni would always say. "Even if it feels like it, it only means that your fate isn't what you thought.

Linda Pastan

I'm only leaving you for a handful of days, but it feels as though I'll be gone forever—- the way the door closes behind me with such solidity, the way my suitcase carries everything I'd need for an eternity of traveling light. I've left my hotel n...

Linda Pastan

Because the night you asked me, the small scar of the quarter moon had healed - the moon was whole again; because life seemed so short; because life stretched out before me like the halls of a nightmare; because I knew exactly what I wanted; because ...

Linda Pastan

Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open--that one and that--and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a cow in sweetest pasture. For life is co...

Linda Pastan

Author Bio

  • NameLinda Pastan
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornMay 27, 1932
  • CountryUnited States Of America