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.

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Right now, I’m doing something that matters to me—which is simply putting words on a page. It’s a privilege, too, the allowance to write these words for an audience that I care about—an audience that is interested in what I have to say. — Mark Danowsky

The future is light drifting like water, / light emptying itself on the white / beaches of the earth, / on the sidewalks of cities, / at roadsides where the dying watch their own ghosts / rising — Joyce Ellen Davis

My lovers know the blast of my chaotic giving; / they tremble at the whip of my supple thighs; / you cross me at your peril, I swallow light / when the warm of anger lashes me into a spin — Kwame Dawes

This is how a man seizes / what he wants, how a man / turns the world over in dreams, / eats a solid meal and waits / for death to come like nothing, / like the open sky, like light / at early morning. — Kwame Dawes

We who gave, owned nothing / learned the value of dirt, how / a man or woman can stand / among the unruly growth, / look far into its limits, / a place of stone and entanglements, / and suddenly understand / the meaning of a name, a deed — Kwame Dawes

‎For a long time I considered / Hating everything in the world. Instead, I decided / To huff it. All of it. Porcelain. Impotence. The taste of wounds. — Nick Demske

I will make me beautiful if it takes / Uglying everything else — Nick Demske

We draw ponies. / Over and over again, to keep the fires of hell / At bay. Pretty ponies. — Nick Demske

Either you swallow the pill or you refuse to swallow the pill. You can’t do both, our current model of time being what it is. — Risa Denenberg

My bedraggled / animal-body vetoes evolution, wants to crawl off / behind the couch and die like an old house-cat. — Risa Denenberg

There is not enough salve / on the continent to swathe this busted body — Risa Denenberg

I wanna end this prophylactic tour / Afraid that no-one around me / Understands my potato / Think I’m only a spud boy / Looking for a real tomato — DEVO

In my chest I am two-hearted always— / love and what love becomes / arrive when they want to, and hungry. — Natalie Diaz

The things that never can come back, are several. / Childhood, some forms of Hope — the Dead. — Emily Dickinson, as written on the back of a coconut cake recipe card

That watery light people get sometimes / when they’re first arriving / and when / they’re / leaving for good — Michael Dickman

Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head / Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood / But then I was young. — Carol Ann Duffy

Any fictionist knows that one event, even if poorly executed, can make another happen, the slightest authenticity creating a path to the hidden. — Stephen Dunn