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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The flyswatter was / a whip. The flyswatter was a flyswatter. / I was thrown into a fire ant bed. I wanted to be / a man. It was summer in Texas and dry. / I burned. — Tarfia Faizullah

What matters is the individual movements that you can have with other people and maybe, by this strange magic, you write these little characters in black and white on a page and someone picks it up somewhere and they feel heard or understood or comforted. Even if the poem is about the darkest thing in the world, someone else felt that. You know, you can talk in these big terms. All I can do is speak for myself and say my life has been literally saved by some of those moments. — Joseph Fasano

for years she tells me / we are never so blessed / as to lose the things / we have left behind / or to survive clean / the water’s determined rinse — Jose Faus

One nail at the foot / a fecund rabbit / a slithering snake / a bouquet infused / with rose madder eyes / alizarin fugitive color / dripping cadmium bands / thick impasto whites / layer upon layer / ceremoniously ordained — Jose Faus

God is a potato / and a can of boiling water / and it has never been otherwise. / There is no god you cannot eat / or swing against an enemy. — Ari Feld

I saw one in a grocery store / come out with a pint / I saw another come out / with nothing / I saw another putting a rope / through the loops of his pants / I saw one / with a bird on his shoulder — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The small one, / the one joined with the sky, / the one we carried, / the one we sang / into the blue, into the black — Greg Field

You’re not a citizen of language or memory, / but I am. — Kathleen Flenniken

Let me drift, let me come / to nothing for a while. Let nothing come to me, let / a hush move with the seeping certainty of water — Ruth Foley

our liver is oak, / it filters your blood like rain through / the leaves it clutches even in January. / It sprouts acorns and will not let them drop. — Ruth Foley

Your liver is oak, / it filters your blood like rain through / the leaves it clutches even in January. / It sprouts acorns and will not let them drop. — Ruth Foley

I don’t want to go down the street smiling like a salesman trying to sell the product of me. — Melissa Fondakowski

Reading poetry requires a quietness not unlike meditation, where oftentimes attempts at “making logical sense” of a poem will both alienate you from the poem, and ruin the poem’s—for lack of a better word—duende. — Melissa Fondakowski

Poetry is what maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty. — Carolyn Forché

He curled as / tightly as when he fell. Head tucked. / Isn’t that how it is? Head up, head down, / death. No matter the matter. — Sarah Miller Freehauf

Subtle ways to sign our names / in concealed, sheltered places / where those who search will find them. — Meg Freer

I cannot accept that the opposite of desire looks so much like loss. — Joseph Fritsch