20 Quotes by Gregory Orr

To learn by heart is to learnBy hurt—grief inscribingIts wisdom in the soft tissue.Song you sing, poem you are—Finger moving, preciseAs a phonograph needle,Along the groove of scar.

The dead sing us songs I’m learning to answer.

Maybe she loved me,maybe not –who knows?Not even the godscan see intoa human heart –it’s that dark.

The way the word sinksinto the deep snow of the page

Love is what I sought."Hunger," they called it.

Each night, I knelt on a marble slaband scrubbed at the blood.I scrubbed for years and still it was there.But tonight the bones in my feetbegin to burn. I stand upand start walking, and the slabappears under my feet with each step,a white road only as long as your body.

Every breath is a resurrection.

When it’s right you can’t say Who is kissing whom.

Poetry is the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of despair and into the light.