how to write the great american novel, abridged.

[hollyslowly]

In the interests of uncluttering my desktop, a collection of quotes that I have saved in a thousand various .rtf files.

Comments

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

But isn’t it drafty at night,

alone in that canyon
with the wind of the mind

dragging its debris—

I wanted to put
my mouth on you

and draw out whatever toxin …

—but I understand. There are limits
to love.

"You with the crack running through you," Kim Addonizio.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I didn't see this before. But yes, and yes.

there are no limits to love

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay.

never has this hashtag been more appropriate

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

#kellerman ships it 4ever

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

"Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale," Dan Albergotti.

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

This has been one of my favorite poems about depression for some time.

<3

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

I’d rather
heave half a brick than say
I love you, though I do
I’d rather
crawl in a hole than call you
darling, though you are
I’d rather
wrench off an arm than hug you though
it’s what I long to do
I’d rather
gather a posy of poison ivy than
ask if you love me

so if my
hair doesn’t stand on end it’s because
I never tease it
and if my
heart isn’t in my mouth it’s because
it knows its place
and if I
don’t take a bite of your ear it’s because
gristle gripes my guts
and if you
miss the message better get new
glasses and read it twice

"first person demonstrative," Phyllis Gotlieb.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

You are running away from everyone
who loves you,
from your family,
from old lovers, from friends.

They run after you with accumulations
of a former life, copper earrings,
plates of noodles, banners
of many lost revolutions.

You love to say the trees are naked now
because it never happens
in your country. This is a mystery
from which you will never

recover. And yes, the trees are naked now,
everything that still breathes in them
lies silent and stark
and waiting. You love October most

of all, how there is no word
for so much splendor.
This, too, is a source
of consolation. Between you and memory

everything is water. Names of the dead,
or saints, or history.
There is a realm in which
—no, forget it,

it’s still too early to make anyone understand.
A man drives a stake
through his own heart
and afterwards the opposite of nostalgia

begins to make sense: he stops raking the leaves
and the leaves take over
and again he has learned
to let go.

"The Opposite of Nostalgia," Eric Gamalinda.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you

is that a fact or a weapon?

"Power Politics," Margaret Atwood.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all?

Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. 'Plenty more fish in the sea', they'll say or 'You're better off without them,' or 'Do you want some of these potato chips?' They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way that it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the one person that you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, or show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live.

Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.

Only Forward, Michael Marshall Smith.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

“I can’t tell you how to live your life,” Samuel said, “although I do be telling you how to live it. I know that it might have been better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world. And while I tell you, I am myself sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It’s small mining—small mining. You’re too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.”

Adam’s face was bent down, and his jawbone jutted below his temples from clutching.

Samuel glanced at him. “That’s right,” he said. “Set your teeth in it. How we do defend a wrongness! Shall I tell you what you do, so that you will not think you invented it? When you go to bed and blow out the lamp—then she stands in the doorway with a little light behind her, and you can see her nightgown stir. And she comes sweetly to your bed, and you, hardly breathing, turn back the covers to receive her and move your head over on the pillow to make room for her head beside yours. You can smell the sweetness of her skin, and it smells like no other skin in the world –”

“Stop it,” Adam shouted at him. “Goddam you, stop it! Stop nosing over my life! You’re like a coyote sniffing around a dead cow.”

“The way I know,” Samuel said softly, “is that one came to me that selfsame way—night after month after year, right to the very now. And I think I should have double-bolted my mind and sealed off my heart against her, but I did not. All of these years I’ve cheated Liza. I’ve given her an untruth, a counterfeit, and I’ve saved the best for those dark sweet hours. And now I could wish that she may have had some secret caller too. But I’ll never know that. I think she would maybe have bolted her heart and thrown the key to hell.”

East of Eden, John Steinbeck.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

let it go--the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise--let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go--the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers--you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go--the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all things--let all go
dear
so comes love

ee cummings

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Now that we're alone we can talk prince man to man
though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant
nothing but black sun with broken rays
I could never think of your hands without smiling
and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests
they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this
The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart
and the knight's feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier's funeral without having been a soldier
the only ritual I am acquainted with a little
There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts
crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums
drums I know nothing exquisite

those will be my manoeuvres before I start to rule
one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life
you believed in crystal notions not in human clay
always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras
wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit
you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to
and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me
you chose the easier part an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and clock's dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project
and a decree on prostitutes and beggars
I must also elaborate a better system of prisons
since as you justly said Denmark is a prison
I go to my affairs This night is born
a star named Hamlet We shall never meet
what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos
and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince

"Elegy of Fortinbras," Zbignew Herbert, trns. by Czeslaw Milosz.

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

This post is like a trip back in time for me, at least sort of! I really loved Edna St. Vincent Millay in high school (this one (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/237262) is probably still my favorite poem of hers) and that was the same time when I started reading Zbigniew Herbert; I've read most of his published volumes in English, though some new English translations became available in 2007. LOL, I went to college on Herbert!

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Who's she, that one in your arms?

She's the one I carried my bones to
and built a house that was just a cot
and built a life that was over an hour
and built a castle where no one lives
and built, in the end, a song
to go with the ceremony.

Why have you brought her here?
Why do you knock on my door
with your little stores and songs?

I had joined her the way a man joins
a woman and yet there was no place
for festivities or formalities
and these things matter to a woman
and, you see, we live in a cold climate
and are not permitted to kiss on the street
so I made up a song that wasn't true.
I made up a song called Marriage.

You come to me out of wedlock
and kick your foot on my stoop
and ask me to measure such things?

Never. Never. Not my real wife.
She's my real witch, my fork, my mare,
my mother of tears, my skirtful of hell,
the stamp of my sorrows, the stamp of my bruises
and also the children she might bear
and also a private place, a body of bones
that I would honestly buy, if I could buy,
that I would marry, if I could marry.

And should I torment you for that?
Each man has a small fate allotted to him
and yours is a passionate one.

But I am in torment. We have no place.
The cot we share is almost a prison
where I can't say buttercup, bobolink,
sugarduck, pumpkin, love ribbon, locket,
valentine, summergirl, funnygirl and all
those nonsense things one says in bed.
To say I have bedded with her is not enough.
I have not only bedded her down.
I have tied her down with a knot.

Then why do you stick your fists
into your pockets? Why do you shuffle
your feet like a schoolboy?

For years I have tied this knot in my dreams.
I have walked through a door in my dreams
and she was standing there in my mother's apron.
Once she crawled through a window that was shaped
like a keyhole and she was wearing my daughter's
pink corduroys and each time I tied these women
in a knot. Once a queen came. I tied her too.
But this is something I have actually tied
and now I have made her fast.
I sang her out. I caught her down.
I stamped her out with a song.
There was no other apartment for it.
There was no other chamber for it.
Only the knot. The bedded-down knot.
Thus I have laid my hands upon her
and have called her eyes and her mouth
as mine, as also her tongue.

Why do you ask me to make choices?
I am not a judge or a psychologist.
You own your bedded-down knot.

And yet I have real daytimes and nighttimes
with children and balconies and a good wife.
Thus I have tied these other knots,
yet I would rather not think of them
when I speak to you of her. Not now.
If she were a room to rent I would pay.
If she were a life to save I would save.
Maybe I am a man of many hearts.

A man of many hearts?
Why then do you tremble at my doorway?
A man of many hearts does not need me.

I'm caught deep in the dye of her.
I have allowed you to catch me red-handed,
catch me with my wild oats in a wild clock
for my mare, my dove and my own clean body.
People might say I have snakes in my boots
but I tell you that just once am I in the stirrups,
just once, this once, in the cup.
The love of the woman is in the song.
I called her the woman in red.
I called her the woman in pink
but she was ten colors
and ten women
I could hardly name her.

I know who she is.
You have named her enough.

Maybe I shouldn't have put it in words.
Frankly, I think I'm worse for this kissing,
drunk as a piper, kicking the traces
and determined to tie her up forever.
You see the song is the life,
the life I can't live.
God, even as he passes,
hand down monogamy like slang.
I wanted to write her into the law.
But, you know, there is no law for this.

Man of many hearts, you are a fool!
The clover has grown thorns this year
and robbed the cattle of their fruit
and the stones of the river
have sucked men's eyes dry,
season after season,
and every bed has been condemned,
not by morality or law,
but by time.

"Interrogation of the Man of Many Hearts," Anne Sexton.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

And here I am just to tell you I love your icon. Dat quote.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I know, that ASW needs to sit down and stop. "The way a bomb loves a crowd."

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

I want to marry this post.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Legal in several states! It loves you back.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

When she says your name, you think it was she who named you.

Henry Rollins.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

"Let it go," Tony says, and looks away. "It's really not your problem, anyway."

"You're so goddamn frustrating sometimes," Steve snaps, "would it kill you to just swallow your pride a little and-- "

"Yes, yes, okay, it would, it would kill me, because I have so much pride to swallow, don't tell me you haven't noticed--"

Ready, Aim, Fire, gyzm.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Then they were quiet. Dean's throat jammed with variations on don't go, but he wasn't going to do that. Lie cheat and steal, but never beg, and for a long moment Dean wished he were a different man entirely.

That passed too.

Smart People Who Do Dumb Things, candle-beck.

[swear-jar.livejournal.com]

HAVE YOU LISTENED TO THE PODCAST THIS AUTHOR MADE OF THAT FIC BECAUSE IT IS AMAZING.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

One night a co-worker says that I have the worst luck of anyone she's ever met (We arouse pity by cultivating the most repulsive wounds). A version of empathy, I suppose, but I don't really want to talk about it. If we got out drinking after work, if I end up spending the night with her, maybe I'll say more, as we talk afterward, as a way to explain something about myself, why I'm the way I am, why I'm in her bed and not Emily's. An affair is a room to disappear into for a few hours, another place to hide. But if asked directly I'll say he's just another drunk, that's what I've always heard, a drunk and a con man, he has nothing to do with me. I don't know you at all, she will say, a few months into our affair, but if you ever want to talk. . . and I'll smile a skull's smile and one by one the lights will go off inside me.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Nick Flynn.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

We arouse pity by cultivating the most repulsive wounds

Ugh ow close to the bone.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

It's like I have a loaded gun in my mouth and my finger's on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gunmetal.

Robert Downey, Jr.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Hey this is such a blend of pathos and incredly hot, fuck you Robert.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

I JUST WANNA BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM. I NEED TO JUST GET PAST MYSELF. DROP THE BRAVADO AND JUST MAKE DOPE PRODUCT. EVERYTHING IS NOT THAT SERIOUS.

Kanye West.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

WELL SAID KANYE

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

At first I was (a) really excited about you using THAT ICON for the post (still excited) and (b) confused because I didn't realize you were putting the quotes in comments, so I was just looking at that post on my flist and trying to figure out where the quotes were. ANYWAY. This is an interesting way of organizing your quote file! I wouldn't have thought of it myself. Clever!

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

I was just looking at that post on my flist and trying to figure out where the quotes were.

LOL, oh dude I feel like that's something carlyinrome would do, too.

THIS POST DELIGHTS ME. Because I get to throw my quotes around and stick pretty icons on them!

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs!

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of the stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget God. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Lawrence M. Krauss.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

It’s not easy being a barbarian in Rome. The Romans rarely listen, but the barbarian has to keep it real.

Sinan Antoon.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

Success or failure were different masks for the same beast, which is fear. So it was better to be a no show than to be a poor show. It still bolsters up my false pride, my ego, when I say ‘well I didn’t try, so you never know how good I’m going to be. And that way you can busk many years. Jay-Z says ‘this is me making it up’ – meaning ‘imagine if I wrote something, if I really cared’. And he’s saying that as a joke, but it’s the same sentiment.

Tom Hardy.

[formanymiles.livejournal.com]

MARGARET
I promise you, I've changed since we last met, Doctor. There was this girl... just today... young thing. Something of a danger. She was getting too close. I felt the blood lust rising, just as the family taught me, I was going to kill her without a thought. And then... I stopped. She's alive somewhere right now, she's walking around this city because I CAN change - I DID change. I know I can't prove it--

THE DOCTOR
(calmly)
I believe you.

MARGARET
Then you know I'm capable of better.

THE DOCTOR
It doesn't mean anything.

MARGARET
I spared her life.

THE DOCTOR
You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared. Because she smiled... because he's got freckles... 'cos they begged... and that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter millions. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction... you happen to be kind.

MARGARET
(coldly)
Only a killer would know that.

Doctor Who 1x11, "Boom Town."