December 2011
136 posts
Poetry is my understanding with the world, my intimacy with things, my...
– Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Katherine’s eye is the poet’s eye.
– Carol Rumens, in anarticle on Philip Larkin’s A Girl in Winter
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The morning when she came to England for the first time had been still and hot:...
– Philip Larkin, A Girl in Winter
What will survive of us is love.”
-Philip Larkin, from “An Arundel Tomb
Simone de Beauvoir had a library card at the age of four.
– “In Which We Prefer to Be Simone de Beauvoir”, by Ellen Copperfield (here)
In which we prefer to be Simone de Beauvoir →
The late evening is the time of times. Then with that unearthly beauty before...
– Katherine Mansfield, from her Notebooks
The astonishing flowers, seething
a blue I could barely see.
– Mark Doty, from “Days of 1981” in Fire to Fire
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I must endure the timid sun.
– “Lines Written In Dejection”, W. B. Yeats
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What then will remain?
I sigh, suffer, search,
and my wanderings
will never...
– “Anxieties”, Ingeborg Bachmann (translated by Peter Filkins)
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When I cycled through the countryside and saw it all drenched in sunlight and...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
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The weight of roses falls silently from the walls.
– “Hotel de la Paix”, Ingeborg Bachmann (translated by Peter Filkins)
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“One night in June 1944, I tried to exorcize death with words. I excerpt some of my notes here, just as they came from my pen:
‘I was lying in bed, my stomach resting on the mattress, my knees and feet pressed against the ground. The silence of the night turned to a sound of water and rustling leaves, characteristic noises from my childhood. Death closed over me. A little patience...
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People were happy and laughing, the sun shone, the streets had never looked...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life (who learnt to ride a bicycle during the war)
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One remark of Camus’s also moved me a great deal. I had lent him a typed...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
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Homie is where the heart is.
– Marge Simpson (from a note written by my boyfriend)
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Well before the holidays I applied to the proprietors of the Hôtel de la...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
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This time we didn’t hurry things, but travelled in short stages, making...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
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Pyrrhus et Cinéas was finished in July and accepted by Gallimard. She Came to...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
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I was nearly through with The Blood of Others by the beginning of 1943. It was...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
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Colette Audry sometimes spoke of Simone Weil to me; and though I felt no great...
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life