My name on his lips is a symphony. How can two simple beats of basic human language engulf me so completely? We stare at each other for a mini infinity. I’m terrified of speaking and breaking the spell that’s fallen over us.
Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.
On the hill behind her crows flew one by one into the bare trees, arranging their dark blots in the scrim of branches and adding their warnings to the drear sounds of this day. Gone, gone, they rasped. Here was a dead world learning to speak in disso...
With the suggestion of a compromise Gawaine mustered up enough courage to speak. "What will you do if I surrender?" he asked. "Why, I'll eat you," said the dragon. "And if I don't surrender?" "I'll eat you just the same.
That is what you love a friend for: the ability to change your angle of vision, bring back your best self when you feel worst. And speak the truth -- but without malice. Loving candour is the secret of friendship.
It may...be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character.
(Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.) You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.
Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart.
Perfect music has its cause. It arises from equilibrium. Equilibrium arises from righteousness, and righteousness arises from the meaning of the cosmos. Therefore one can speak about music only with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos.
The whole crowd interrupted and told him, 'No, we won't let you go. You have worked hard for our rights and you can't quit now.' 'Then,' said Riel, 'if I must, I will desert.' 'If you desert, we will desert with you.
But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite film...
...the wise words of a friend and guide rang in my head. 'How would you distinguish a true servant of God from a traitor?...You should take especial notice of how a person speaks, not of other things, but of God.
To create the needed change...We must become angry enough to stand up & speak out against all ABUSE & INJUSTICE against Humanity! Wrong is Wrong and NEVER can be Right!
We demand that sex speak the truth [...] and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves wich we think we possess in our immediate consciousness.
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of...
It's dreadfully unfair to say things like that when this is likely the last time we will speak and we both know you don't mean what you say. It's pure selfishness that you want to keep me here.
My advice to the reader approaching a poem is to make the mind still and blank. Let the poem speak. This charged quiet mimics the blank space ringing the printed poem, the nothing out of which something takes shape.
In youth,' he said, speaking as if from a great distance, 'we believe, and the death of belief forces us to disavow all belief. But that disavowal, time softens, and if we do not believe, we hope. Belief is easier to kill, somehow, and its death easi...
Why won’t you look at me?” she murmurs. He doesn’t speak, seemingly at a loss for words. “It’s my scars.” It comes out as barely a whisper. Horror spasms across his face. “What? No,” he says, a bit breathless. “You’re beautiful. A...
I remember thinking how easy it is to speak in clichés, to steal a line from pulp fiction and let it fall. We can only hover around the inexpressible with our words anyway, and there is comfort in saying what we have heard before.
I'm sorry to disturb you, madam,' said Nurse, 'but I thought I'd better speak to you. It's about Miss Delia's knickers' she continued, after a glance at the Vicar and a rapid decision that his cloth protected him. 'She really hasn't a pair fit to wea...
