For two decades, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically. Some poets and writers have their own dedicated pages.

—

My birds of prey are not bomb / droppers, but my broken immune system clawing / and pecking inside my body’s basement. — Sara Backer

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

—

by Li Bai, translated By Sam Hamill

God is pretty much a tree. Trees and nature—all that stuff talks to you if you listen. — Roseanne Barr

For more than a decade, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically.

—

Midfield,
attached to nothing,
the skylark singing.

— Basho

Wherever we are in life, whatever people we are responding to, let us be witnesses to those who are most abandoned, who need our care. — Father Michael Bassano

This is my inadequate attempt to capture it, even though it can’t be captured, can’t be preserved. — Lynn Behrendt

It is silly: this constant falling, this ebullient animal / tumble, this dizzy, over-worded, breathless groping / to some place only named in ancient, unknown tongues. — John Belk

I give my best to the shape / of clouds and the dead / in their resting places — Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

When the hot air fades / when the dampness comes / in sleep / in waking / when I am ancient in my movements / a humming corpse / resting on / pillows / How will I be found / will they feed me the coins I will need / Who will kiss my falling / when I fall — Chase Berggrun

I give my best to the shape / of clouds and the dead / in their resting places — Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

There are four channels on the black and white TV which seem swept from the cosmic corners of an emptiness you’re learning about in school, along with Sex Ed and its ragged chalkboard diagrams of ungainly organs deployed with all the dignity of trying to smuggle accordions across state lines. — Simeon Berry

There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places. — Wendell Berry

Even after we called the neighbors for water, more water, and the volunteer fire department came to mist the dying herd, cattle kept falling. They died all day long until even the sun grew tired of watching. — Darla Biel

Each moment / builds a new universe / and I need to find / you there. — James Bertolino

Writing is not language, but merely a way of recording language by visible marks. — Leonard Bloomfield, Language (1933)

The subject of pain is the business I am in. To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses. — Louise Bourgeois

What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself. — Louise Bourgeois

A cocktail dress achieves its effect through elegant abbreviation; shouldn’t the poem do the same? — Dave Bonta

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. ― Jorge Luis Borges

Something signals me / to skulk the pasture with the soft paw / of the body, to snap the hasp / and climb inside the kitchen window. / A wolf’s no scavenger. / Hunger licks its tongue / across the danger of my teeth. — Ash Bowen

It seems illogical to preserve a social order when the social order is itself only a false dilemma of death. — Anne Boyer

Emotions … continue to cause suffering until we experience them where they live in our body. — Tara Brach

Sensations in the body are ground zero, the place where we directly experience the entire play of life. — Tara Brach

When we leave our bodies, we leave home. — Tara Brach

When you’re with fear and befriending it, the who you are enlarges, and [the fear] becomes like a wave in your ocean. — Tara Brach

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. — Ray Bradbury

The comfort / of unhealthy patterns blushing harder than rubies. / I would do what I couldn’t as a child and turn from you. — Traci Brimhall

Dying or illness is a kind of poetry. It’s a derangement. — Anatole Broyard

Accessibility wasn’t one of the virtues I learned coming up. Great poems are rough, crude, loud, gnarled, hermetic. They are thinking great ideas but they aren’t talking to you about it. — Sharon Bryan

When you know what a poem is trying to do and understand how it is working, then you become useful. The poem has every clue you’re ever going to get. Stop worrying about what’s not there. You can do what you want with a poem, but it’s only OK if you take it back to the poem and the poem says, Yeah, that’s OK. — Sharon Bryan

We are all born in Oklahoma, in a certain way. — Andrew Brusletten

and when people come to visit and / shoot my hours through the head they / offer nothing interesting or constructive. / I find myself resenting them and / their chatter / their idle ways / since I am always fighting for each minute — Charles Bukowski

Like a hummingbird in our hands, we must hold our convictions with a relaxed fist — Laura Caitlin Burke

One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don’t know they know. … Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough. … So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness. — William S. Burroughs

it takes me 10 minutes / to write a poem / sometimes / & then / I want to whisper or / shout it about / town — Mairead Byrne

With our thoughts we make the world. — from the Dhammapada, as translated by Thomas Byrom