Despair Quote by Brenda Shaughnessy

What if all possible pain was only the grief of truth?

— Brenda Shaughnessy

I've been melted into something too easy to spill. I make more and more of myself in order to make more and more of…

— Brenda Shaughnessy

How anyone becomes herself/is a mystery.

— Brenda Shaughnessy

“Where can we go if not to each other, resenting every step?”

— Brenda Shaughnessy

Death and life are, for most of us, too complex to comprehend, but Alex Lemon can pretty casually, accurately, and marvelously correlate them to…

— Brenda Shaughnessy

“All gifts are riddles, all lives/are in the middle of mother-lives.”

— Brenda Shaughnessy

“Secret, smug believers! God never gives you more than you can bear, they like to say, as if the strong should be punished for…

— Brenda Shaughnessy

“Would I dance with you? Both forever and rather die. / It would be like dying, yes. Yes I would.”

— Brenda Shaughnessy

You are not broken. You break again and again because that's what breaking means. To be whole.

— Brenda Shaughnessy

“I'm Perfect at Feelings, so I have no problem telling you why you cried over the third lost metal or the mousetrap. I knew…

— Brenda Shaughnessy

I came to see that what constitutes strength is not just a muscle or will. It can also include the most desperate vulnerability, the…

— Brenda Shaughnessy

“It seems unlikely that so much literature could be made from twenty-six letters. Doesn't it seem it could all be boiled down to one…

— Brenda Shaughnessy