46 Quotes by Mary Ruefle

I wonder will Iever see a grape again? When I think of the vineyardwhere we met in October—when you dropped a clustercustom insisted you be kissed by a stranger—how afterthe harvest we plunged into a stream so icy our palmsturned pink. It seemed our future was sealed.

There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. Writers know that. I have never met a writer who does not crave to be alone. We have to be alone to do what we do.

We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love – a connection between things.

If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it.

The words secret and sacred are siblings.

A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.

I am convinced that the first lyric poem was written at night, and that the moon was witness to the event and that the event was witness to the moon. For me, the moon has always been the very embodiment of lyric poetry.

In the end I would rather wonder than know.

The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.