62 Quotes by Helen Humphreys

Memory is a barricade against forgetting; light is a bulwark against darkness; life is a flex against the stillness of the grave. Maybe that's what I'm trying to do here, clear a space in all the debris, through all the anxieties and worries, where I can just exist, easily and simply, entire, for as long as I have left.

Dark is just light turned inside out, thinks Maddy. Why be afraid of that?

In the end, I will have to make a choice about how to tell my story....There has to be a moment of going forward, when all the possibilities are left behind.

I can feel the heat blossoms on your skin.

The Moment opens. The moment closes. There is sunlight. There is frost. There is the brief idea of roses amid the patch of weeds.

The author is at one end of the experience of writing and the reader is at the other, and the book is the contract between you.

... the poetic moment is a static one. It's watching through a window while the action happens elsewhere. And then the poet turns away from the window because the poem is done ... It cannot unflinchingly stare grief down. At some point, by necessity, or design, it must turn away.

We have built our houses between what is fluid and what is fixed.

There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is always believed, no matter what. The seeds from which the garden has grown.