Sometimes I Read Books That I Only Want To Keep To Myself As If The Whole World Would Conquer The Magic

When the people you are closest to, who may even know you more than you know yourself, call you fearless and strong when you start doubting yourself, it makes you realise that there is a whole part of yourself that only others see and believe in. And maybe you could start believing in that too.

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Any quotes about night and stars, please? ✨

"The night is shaped like a howling wolf."

— Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness; from ‘Paths of the Mirror’, tr. Yvette Siegert

"Then, it being night, and the twin stars of Castor and Pollux just visible in the sky, I spoke of that tragedy, of two brothers whose love we might find unnatural, so stricken in grief when one was killed that the other, begging for his life again, accepted instead that for half the year one might live, and for the rest of the year the other, but never the two together. So it is for us, who while on earth in these suits of lead sense the presence of one we love, not far away but too far to touch."

— Jeanette Winterson, from 'Sexing the Cherry'

"The night is cold and delicate and full of angels"

— John Ashbery, Rivers and Mountains; from ‘The Ecclesiast’

"Oh starry starry night! This is how / I want to die."

— Anne Sexton, All My Pretty Ones; from ‘The Starry Night’

"Life is too short to be all daylight. Night is not less; it’s more."

—Jeanette Winterson, from 'Why I adore the night'

"…a strange night-time otherworld of darkness and starlight and the fine line between life and death."

— Katherine Clements, from 'The Coffin Path'

"But the Orphics say that black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros, whom some call Phanes, was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion."

—Robert Graves, from 'The Greek Myths: The Complete and Definitive Edition'

"That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word — for religion — so I go outside at night to paint the stars [...]"

— Vincent van Gogh

"Night. Such a beautiful word."

— Janet Fitch, from 'Chimes of a Lost Cathedral'

"Why shun darkness? / The night abounds with diamond drops."

— Forugh Farrokhzad, Asir (Captive); from 'On Loving', tr. Sholeh Wolpé

"Dear, though the night is gone, / Its dream still haunts to-day,"

— W. H. Auden, Selected Poems; from ‘Dear, though the night is gone’

"There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, "Consume me."

"I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams."

— Virginia Woolf, from 'The Waves'

"By day I am nothing, by night I am myself."

Fernando Pessoa, from 'The Book of Disquiet', tr. Margaret Jull Costa

"...the frozen glitter of stars, shattered glass on black silk..."

— Maggie O' Farrell, from 'Hamnet'

"I sometimes fancy that my body is made up of all the different stars. Leo’s in my chest; I’m sure it’s Leo because my heart roars."

— Jeanette Winterson, from 'Boating for Beginners'

"Night, the night again, the magisterial wisdom of the dark."

— Alejandra Pizarnik, A Musical Hell; from ‘Desire for the Word’, tr. Yvette Siegert

"If only at the midnight hour / You’d send me a greeting across the stars."

— Anna Akhmatova, Seventh Book; from Sweetbrier In Blossom; ‘In a Dream’, tr. Judith Hemschemeyer

"Under the shield of night, / let me unburden the moon."

— Forugh Farrokhzad, Reborn; from ‘Border Walls’, tr. Sholeh Wolpé

"The night snows stars and the earth creaks."

— Ted Hughes, Wodwo; from ‘The Howling of Wolves’

“Death is woven in with the violets…”

— Virginia Woolf, from ‘The Waves’

Thursday, 23rd September 2021

We are captured by a subconscious searching for recognition and a meaning that is found beating through everything - like the arteries and veins twisting along the ground where walks our feet. 

Having an existential crisis over whether people love me or not when it's really just poor communication skills on my part due to dyspraxia and low self-esteem gaah

something i wish i had realized earlier: you can write poems on the same subject more than once. you can write, paint, draw the same thing over and over if you want to. you can spend your whole life making art about oranges. i think i always felt this pressure to get it right the first time like i couldn’t go back and use that inspiration again. but you can. you can go back and revisit it. you can pick up the conversation again and again if you have more to say.

Strained and wanting

I simmer below the surface,

a thousand pieces of light

stretched thin and glaring

piece together my skin,

thoughts rumbling through

troubled waters, fine lines

and wasted moments,

preoccupied with nothing

Portrait of María Hahn - Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta