“Who does not seek to be remembered?
Memory is Master of Death, the chink
In his armour of conceit. I shall leave
That which makes my going the sheerest
Dream of an afternoon.”
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman
“O, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking in it,
Break too.”
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
You come with a little
Black string tied
Around your tongue,
Knotted to remind
Where you came from
And why you left
Jericho Brown, Second Language
My mind is a wishbone drying. I hold it taut & pull to break.
Emily Skaja, How to Mend a Faucet Dripping Thread
“Some scars are carved into our bones–a part of who we are, shaping what we become.”
Sue Lynn Tan, Daughter of the Moon Goddess
She had prayed for the moon to rise. But now she found the half-light of the incipient moon more terrifying than darkness. The world was now peopled with vague, fantastic figures that dissolved under her steady gaze and then formed again in new shapes.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
“Gossips all must have their tea.”
Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion
“We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I do have a penchant for sweet people.
Trang Thanh Tran, She is a Haunting
“The world is bad.
One does not know whom to trust.
The good ruler who stands for the people becomes a
victim too soon.
And bad rulers like bad sauce, stay longer!
A world that knows not what it wants.
A dizzy world, this.”
Ola Rotimi, The Gods are Not to Blame
There are times when you have to scare yourself to find yourself.
Joshua Whitehead, Jonny Appleseed
a mute TV, a battered skillet bearing traces
of Saturday night’s dismal scrambled eggs,
a drab teapot that whistles every idiom
You try to settle in and even think.
Adam Zagajewski, Apartment for Scholars
Once you let people know anything about what you think, that’s it, you’re dead. Then they’ll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them, yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons.
Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl
Cecily Wong, Diamond Head
And I know
that I cannot take unto myself all your aches and pains
soothe your tired limbs
for you are too proud
now to want me to
put your feet up on a soft cushion,
hold your head when it aches.
Arapera Hineira Blank, What can I?