Kay Ryan famous quotes

05-20-2025

The day misspent, the love misplaced, has inside it the seed of redemption. Nothing is exempt from resurrection.
-- Kay Ryan

#Redemption #Resurrection #Misplaced
Small presses take chances. Chances are at the heart of all the literature we later know as great.
-- Kay Ryan

#Heart #Literature #Chance
I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.
-- Kay Ryan
The only real access that I have to my mind is when I'm writing.
-- Kay Ryan

#Real #Writing #Mind
As for reality, I don't even have any interest in that word.
-- Kay Ryan

#Reality #Interest
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.
-- Kay Ryan

#Flower #Color #Hue
Action creates/a taste/for itself.
-- Kay Ryan

#Taste #Action
Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable. A place with its own harvest.
-- Kay Ryan

#Waiting #Harvest
What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing. My major sense organ is apparently a pencil.
-- Kay Ryan

#Writing #Organs #Pencils
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 to want somebody else to listen to it. I need, I do want an audience. So it's a strange thing. It's a very private conversation that then, you make public, kind of like the starfish flipping its stomach out.
-- Kay Ryan

#Thinking #Self #Talking
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.
-- Kay Ryan

#Space #Matter #Skirts
A lot of the job that one has to do as a writer is to protect the thing that doesn't match the world.
-- Kay Ryan

#Jobs #World #Protect
It seems like many people think that if you drive yourself crazy, then you can write. Iâ€™m absolutely not interested in that. It made sense to me to be as whole and well as I could be, and as happy. I wanted to see what a fortunate life would produce. What writing would come out of a mind that didnâ€™t try to torment itself? What did I have to know? What did I have to do rather than what can I torment and bend myself into doing? What was the fruit on that tree?
-- Kay Ryan

#Crazy #Writing #Thinking
I simply want to celebrate the fact that right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly â€” and with very little financial encouragement â€” saving lives and minds. I canâ€™t think of a more efficient, hopeful or egalitarian machine, expect perhaps the bicycle.
-- Kay Ryan

#Encouragement #Home #College
The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar--/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it.
-- Kay Ryan

#Agreement #Syrup #Melting
It isn't ever delicate to live.
-- Kay Ryan

#Delicate
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.
-- Kay Ryan

#Ocean #Water #Gaps
It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.
-- Kay Ryan

#Important #Sometimes #Enjoyment
Failure: the renewable resource.
-- Kay Ryan

#Renewable Resources #Resources
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 out like a bait goat and wait and seven others will approach. But watch out: roving packs can pull your word away. You find your stake yanked and some rough bunch to thank.
-- Kay Ryan

#Distance #Waiting #Roving
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 costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in trouble,/how loss activates/a latent double, how/we can feed/as upon nectar/upon need?
-- Kay Ryan

#Loss #Names #Self
CROWN Too much rain loosens trees. In the hills giant oaks fall upon their knees. You can touch parts you have no right toâ€” places only birds should fly to.
-- Kay Ryan

#Rain #Fall #Bird
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 from this however. One is not two countries. One is not meat corrupting. It is important to stay sweet and loving.
-- Kay Ryan

#Country #Sweet #Two
Itâ€™s hard not to jump out instead of waiting to be found. Itâ€™s hard to be alone so long and then hear someone come around. Itâ€™s like some form of skinâ€™s developed in the air that, rather than have torn, you tear. "Hide and Seek
-- Kay Ryan

#Air #Long #Waiting

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