Quotes By Letter: H

“The woman poet must be either a ... sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.”

-Marilyn Hacker

~

“But mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds of Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.”

-The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

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“Hard is it to die, because our delicate flesh doth shrink back from the worm it will not feel, and from that unknown which the winding-sheet doth curtain from our view. But harder still, to my fancy, would it be to live on, green in the leaf and fair, but dead and rotten at the core, and feel that other secret worm of recollection gnawing ever at the heart.”

-She, H. Rider Haggard

~

“There was Wanda, the struggling Polish painter; dark for a Pole with her short, stiff black hair, and her dusky skin, and her colourless lips; yet not withal unattractive, this Wanda. She had wonderful eyes that held fire in their depths, hell-fire at times, if she had been drinking; but at other times a more gentle flame; although never one that it was safe to play with. Wanda saw largely. All that she envisaged was immense: her pictures, her passions, her remorses. She craved with a wellnigh insatiable craving, she feared with a wellnigh intolerable terror â€" not the devil, she was brave with him when in her cups, but God in the person of Christ the Redeemer. Like a whipped cur she crawled to the foot of the Cross, without courage, without faith, without hope of mercy. Outraged by her body she must ruthlessly scourge it - no good, the lust of the eye would betray her. Seeing she desired and desiring she drank, seeking to drown one lust in another. And then she would stand up before her tall easel, swaying a little but with hand always steady. The brandy went into her legs, not her hands; her hands would remain disconcertingly steady. She would start some gigantic and heart-broken daub, struggling to lose herself in her picture, struggling to ease the ache of her passion by smearing the placid white face of the canvas with ungainly yet strangely arresting forms - according to Dupont, Wanda had genius.”

-The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall

~

“The world has started spinning backwards.
Only the acceleration has increased.
When you noticed, it was dark before your feet.
You were standing at the edge of a cliff.

You can't pull back.
Even if you turn pale nothing will happen.

With the light you've sharpened to the utmost,
you continue persistently even if the end of this path is
the end of the world.

There's more to life
than money or honor.
You will forever pretend not to understand.
It's frightening to notice and get hurt.

Your dream at that time, your wishes,
They were all granted, but...
Faster than everyone, you even pass the wind.
Higher than everyone, you even pierce the clouds.
Even if you live too quickly.”

-Too Late, Ayumi Hamasaki

~

“You die, O thrice desired,
And my desire has flown like a dream,
Gone with you is the girdle of my beauty,

But I myself must live who am a goddess
And may not follow you.
Kiss me once again, the last, long kiss,
Until I draw your soul within my lips
And drink down all your love.”

-Mythology, Edith Hamilton

~

“Please bleed
So I know that you are real
So I know that you can feel
The damage that you've done
Who have I become
To myself I am numb, I am numb, I am numb.”

-Please Bleed, Ben Harper

Recommended by Kate.

~

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

-Strictly Personal, Sydney J. Harris

~

“Scars are stories, history written on the body.”

-Kathryn Harrison

~

“Even now I prowl through people's houses. Arriving for a party, I hang my coat in the closet and glance at the shelf above the pole, wondering: what's in those boxes? Upstairs to wash my hands and look in the medicine cabinet. Dental floss and Jolen cream bleach for facial hair. A prescription for tetracycline, one for antifungal ointment. Nothing shameful- no Valium, Xanax, or worse, Prozac. These people aren't anxious or depressed. They have sinus infections and athlete's foot. They don't spend the minutes between waking and showering reciting reasons not to kill themselves.

I suspect that people from unhappy families are always searching the cupboards and drawers of happy people. Sliding a hand between the neat stacks of towels in the linen closet, slipping a finger under the hinged lid of a jewel box, flipping furtively through the pages of a book. They are looking everywhere. As if, perhaps, out might fall a list, an outline, the formula for how they do it.”

-Exposure, Kathryn Harrison

~

“17 and I'm all messed up inside
I cut myself just to feel alive
I leave the light on
I leave the light on
21 on the run
On the run on the run from myself
From myself and everyone
I leave the light on
I leave the light on ”

-Leave the Light On, Beth Hart

~

“I seen myself with a dirty face,
I cut my luck with a dirty ace
I leave the light on,
I leave that light on
I went from zero to minus ten
I drank your wine then
I stole your man
I leave the light on,
I leave that light on.”

-Leave the Light On, Beth Hart

Recommended by Liasain.

~

“When I am right, no one remembers. When I am wrong, no one forgets.”

-Doug Harvey

Recommended by Alyssa.

~

“forsaken heaven
cursed god above
laid with the devil
bring you my love.”

-To Bring You My Love, P.J. Harvey

~

“She tries it on, like a dress.
She decides it doesn't fit,
and starts to take it off.
Her skin comes, too.”

-Love, Lola Haskins

~

“Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

~

“Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

~

“So cut my wrists and black my eyes
(Cut my wrists and black my eyes)
So I can fall asleep tonight or die.”

-Ohio Is For Lovers, Hawthorne Heights

~

“Because a mind is a wonderful thing to twist.”

-Peversions of Science, HBO promotion

~

“Dear Diary. My teen angst bullshit has a body count!”

-Heathers [movie]

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“Sometimes I have a terrible feeling that I am dying not from the virus, but from being untouchable.”

-Amanda Heggs, AIDS sufferer

~

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”

-Almansor, Heinrich Heine

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“Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.”

-Morphine, Heinrich Heine

~

“What did I want? I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, 'The game's afoot!' I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin.

I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.

I had had one chance – for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be – and I had known it – and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get. ”

-Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein

~

“Abstract design is all right- for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror. What modern artists do is pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is intercourse, in which the artist renders emotional his audience... Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art. But it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood. Most of these jokers don't want to use a language you and I can learn; they would rather sneer because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If anything. Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.”

-Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein

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