171 Quotes by Richard Siken

You’d break your heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull when the mind swells.

Land a man in a landscape and he’ll try to conquer it. Make him handsome and you’re a fascist, make him ugly and you’re saying nothing new.

If the dead are watching, I want them to see us writing, dancing, singing, painting. I want them to see that we still reach out to each other.

Let’s admit, without apology, what we do to each other.

The hunter sinks his arrows into the trees and then paints the targets around them. The trees imagine they are deer. The deer imagine they are safe. The arrows: they have no imagination.

A kid under a tablecloth insists he’s a ghost. A table underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us, only pretending to be invisible.

What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once.

We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much.

Oh, the body – its hungers, needs, and limitations. You look at somebody and you realize that they’re in there, inside there, somewhere, and how will you ever reach them, understand them?