97 Quotes by Stevie Smith

There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

If I lie down on my bed I must be here,But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.

Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.

But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever....

The grass is greenThe tulip is redA ginger cat walks overThe pink almond petals on the flower bed. Enough has been said to showIt is life we are taking about.- Oh grateful colours; bright looks!

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,Sharp Roman road to Paradise,Come eat me up, I'll pay thy tollWith all my flesh, and keep my soul.

Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeplyMust take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.'Thus spake the awful aging coupleWhose heart the years had turned to rubble.But the little children, to save any bother,Let it in at one ear and out at the other.

There is a god in whom I do not believeYet to this god my love stretches,This god whom I do not believe in isMy whole life, my life and I am his.Everything that I have of pleasure and pain(Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt)I give this god for him to feed uponAs he is my whole life and I am his.When I am dead I hope that he will eatEverything I have been and have not beenAnd crunch and feed upon it and grow fatEating my life all up as it is his.- God the Eater

The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.