51 Quotes by Galway Kinnell

Let our scars fall in love.

The budstands for all things,even for those things that don’t flower,for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessaryto reteach a thing its loveliness,to put a hand on its browof the flowerand retell it in words and in touchit is lovelyuntil it flowers again from within, of self-blessing

When a group of people get up from a table, the table doesn’tknow which way any of them will go.

Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight,when I come backwe will go out together,we will walk out together among,the ten thousand things,each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,this the nightmare you wake screaming from:being foreverin the pre-trembling of a house that falls.

My tongue goes to the Secretary of the Deadto tell the corpses, "I'm sorry, fellows,the killing was just one of those thingsdifficult to pre-visualize - like a cow,say, getting hit by lightning.

Kiss the mouth which tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

Bending over her bed, I saw the smileI must have seen when gaping up from the crib.Knowing death will come, sensing its onset,may be a fair price for consciousness.But looking at my sister, I wishedshe could have died by surprise,without ever knowing about death.Too late. Wendy said, “I am in three parts.Here on the left is red. That is pain.On the right is yellow. That is exhaustion.The rest is white. I don’t know yet what white is.

How many nights must it takeone such as me to learnthat we aren’t, after all, madefrom that bird that flies out of its ashes,that for usas we go up in flames, our one workisto open ourselves, to bethe flames?