Kay Ryan Quotes

22 quotes in 427 categories

• The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar--/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it.
• I simply want to celebrate the fact that right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly — and with…
• It seems like many people think that if you drive yourself crazy, then you can write. I’m absolutely not interested in that. It made sense…
• A lot of the job that one has to do as a writer is to protect the thing that doesn't match the world.
• Small presses take chances. Chances are at the heart of all the literature we later know as great.
• I don't think any poetry is written that isn't primarily written to the self, in a way... I'm always talking to myself. But I seem…
• What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing. My major sense organ is apparently a pencil.
• Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable. A place with its own harvest.
• It’s hard not to jump out instead of waiting to be found. It’s hard to be alone so long and then hear someone come around.…
• Action creates/a taste/for itself.
• Forgetting takes space./Forgotten matters displace/as much anything else as/anything else. We must/skirt unlabeled crates/as thought it made sense/and take them when we go/to other states.
• Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/ as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps.
• If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change…
• A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight.
• Tenderness and Rot Tenderness and rot share a border. And rot is an aggressive neighbor whose iridescence keeps creeping over. No lessons can be drawn…
• CROWN Too much rain loosens trees. In the hills giant oaks fall upon their knees. You can touch parts you have no right to— places…
• I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.
• BAIT GOAT There is a distance where magnets pull, we feel, having held them back. Likewise there is a distance where words attract. Set one…
• Failure: the renewable resource.
• It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

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