“ You must be taught to love me. Human beings must be taught to love silence and darkness. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2.4K
“ Why would I make you if I meant to limit myself to the ascendant sign, the star, the fire, the fury? ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2.7K
“ (after many years) we were still at that first stage, still preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless; we could see this in one another; we had changed although we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free in order to encounter truth felt it had been revealed. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 3.5K
“ The master said You must write what you see. But what I see does not move me. The master answered Change what you see. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 83
“ I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end, not a suspension: the senses wouldn’t protect me. I caution you as I was never cautioned: you will never let go, you will never be satiated. You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger. Your body will age, you will continue to need. You will want the earth, then more of the earth– Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond. It is encompassing, it will not minister. Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you, it will not keep you alive. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2.1K
“ Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 262
“ Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's voice couldn't make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can't love another human being you have no place in the world. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 376
“ Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond— surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves. I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 60
“ Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary, imperial joy and sorrow of human existence, the dreamed as well as the lived— what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death? ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 678
“ Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray. When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move, my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that? Through the birches, I could see the pond. The sun was cutting small white holes in the water. I got up finally; I walked down to the pond. I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself, like a girl after her first lover turning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign. But nakedness in women is always a pose. I was not transfigured. I would never be free. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2.8K
“ I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem there is no perfect ending. Indeed, there are infinite endings. Or perhaps, once one begins, there are only endings. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2.6K
“ I don’t need your praise to survive. I was here first, before you were here, before you ever planted a garden. And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon are left, and the sea, and the wide field. I will constitute the field. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2.1K
“ The assignment was to fall in love. The details were up to you. The second part was to include in the poem certain words, words drawn from a specific text on another subject altogether. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2.2K
“ Gretel in Darkness: This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead are dead. I hear the witch's cry break in the moonlight through a sheet of sugar: God rewards. Her tongue shrivels into gas.... Now, far from women's arms And memory of women, in our father's hut we sleep, are never hungry. Why do I not forget? My father bars the door, bars harm from this house, and it is years. No one remembers. Even you, my brother, summer afternoons you look at me as though you meant to leave, as though it never happened. But I killed for you. I see armed firs, the spires of that gleaming kiln Nights I turn to you to hold me but you are not there. Am I alone? Spies hiss in the stillness, Hansel we are there still, and it is real, real, that black forest, and the fire in earnest. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 386
“ Look at her, touching his cheek to make a truce, her fingers cool with spring rain; in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus— even here, even at the beginning of love, her hand leaving his face makes an image of departure and they think they are free to overlook this sadness. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 3K
“ The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners’ hands. Not I suppose good news in a culture and economy built on obsolescence. But for a book to be loved this way and turned to this way for consolation and intense renewable excitement seems to me a marvel. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 3.5K
“ It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 548
“ Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's voice couldn't make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can't love another human being you have no place in the world. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 325
“ (after many years) we were still at that first stage, still preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless; we could see this in one another; we had changed although we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free in order to encounter truth felt it had been revealed. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 2K
“ Time passed, turning everything to ice. Under the ice, the future stirred. If you fell into it, you died. It was a time of waiting, of suspended action. I lived in the present, which was that part of the future you could see. The past floated above my head, like the sun and moon, visible but never reachable. It was a time governed by contradictions, as in I felt nothing and I was afraid. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 360
“ The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners’ hands. Not I suppose good news in a culture and economy built on obsolescence. But for a book to be loved this way and turned to this way for consolation and intense renewable excitement seems to me a marvel. ”
- Louise Glück- Copy
- 1.6K
- 1