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. History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.

Edward Gibbon

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

Linda Pastan

#4. 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

#5. The sober guy is always going to have this air of arrogance or self-righteousness, but it's not my intention. I just knew that if I drank, I'd have a drinking problem.

Bradford Cox

#6. Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Nora Ephron

#7. Grief is a circular staircase.

Linda Pastan

#8. 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

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

Linda Pastan

#10. Get real. Life is heavy. It's difficult. It's complex ... even for the wise.

Frederick Lenz

#11. Northwestern's alumni list is truly impressive. This university has graduated best-selling authors, Olympians, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Peabody winners, Emmy winners, and that's just me!

Stephen Colbert

#12. I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.

Neil Gaiman

#13. [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

#14. I wanted to twinkle underwater like the lights of the city.

Dana Reinhardt

#15. Spring is the shortest season.

Linda Pastan

#16. It is hard to combine and unite these two qualities, the carefulness of one who is affected by circumstances, and the intrepidity of one who heeds them not. But it is not impossible: else
were happiness also impossible.

Epictetus

#17. [Retirement] is a dangerous experiment, and generally ends in either drunkenness or hypochrondriacism.

Erasmus Darwin

#18. Many artists in Mexico fight to be the Latina Madonna. I don't want that! Never! Maybe she's the American Gloria Trevi!

Gloria Trevi

#19. 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

#20. What we want is never simple.

Linda Pastan

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

Linda Pastan

#22. Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.

Alan Moore

#23. Divisional exercise is a great game of make-believe.

Patrick MacGill

#24. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. George Santayana, Spanish philosopher

Anonymous

#25. Having life experiences outside of acting is something my family has always made sure happens.

Yara Shahidi