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.

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Gary Snyder / is a haiku / far Write this. There is pleasure and pain and there are marks and signs. / A word may be shaped like a fig or a pig, an effigy or an egg / but / there is only time for fasting and desire, device and design, there is / only time to swerve without limbs, organs or face into a / scientific / silence, pinhole of light — Michael Palmer

I want everything to be / Different and remain / The same / And vice versa / The way a door closes because of the wind / But we imagine / Other reasons — Dean Pasch

It was not a poet, but a poem that walks, that smiles, that suddenly opens a smile that becomes a bird, then fish and disappears. — Octavio Paz

It’s finally over—I’m going home. I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me. — Leonard Peltier

Cold worlds shake from the oar. / The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes. / A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand; / Stars open among the lilies. / Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens? / This is the silence of astounded souls. — Sylvia Plath

The inevitable result of this worship of the self is self-worship, as broadcasting turns ego-casting and each person becomes a solitary producer and their own solitary audience. — Andrew Potter