13 Quotes by Jorie Graham

and angle of vision, dust, gravity, solitude, and the part of the law which is the world's waitingand the part of the law which is my waiting,and the part which is my impatience—now; now?—though there are, there really arethings in the world, you must believe me.

There is a feeling the body gives the mindof having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like fallingwithout the sense that you are passing through one world,that you could reach anotheranytime. Instead the realis crossing you,your body an arrivalyou know is false but can't outrun. And somewhere in betweenthese geese forever entering andthese spiders turning back,this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.

Towards the end of the season it is not bad to have the body. To have experienced joy as the mere lifting of hunger is not to have known it less.

I think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it.

The primary function of the creative use of language – in our age – is to try to constantly restore words to their meanings, to keep the living tissue of responsibility alive.

A poem is a private story, after all, no matter how apparently public. The reader is always overhearing a confession.

If there is anything I love most, in the poems I love, it is the audible braiding of that bravery, that essential empty-handedness, and that willingness to be taken by surprise, all in one voice.

The storm: I close my eyes and, standing in it, try to make it mine.

There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven –.