Linda Pastan Quotes

#1. I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]

Linda Pastan

#2. I regret the way pain has taught me nothing.

Linda Pastan

#3. I am tired of the litany
of months, September October
I am tired of the way the seasons
keep changing, mimicking
the seasons of the flesh
which are real and finite.

Linda Pastan

#4. Grief is a circular staircase.

Linda Pastan

#5. I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.

Linda Pastan

#6. Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut.

Linda Pastan

#7. [But the constricted light,
the year closing down on itself with all
the vacancies of January ahead, leave me
unreconciled even to beauty.]
When will you be coming back?

Linda Pastan

#8. Spring is the shortest season.

Linda Pastan

#9. To be the other woman
is to be a season
that is always about to end,
when the air is flowered
with jasmine and peach,
and the weather day after day
is flawless,
and the forecast
is hurricane.

Linda Pastan

#10. What we want is never simple.

Linda Pastan

#11. Evil is simply
a grammatical error:
a failure to leap
the precipice
between "he"
and "I.

Linda Pastan