Mary Jo Bang quotes

“To say you loved a person. / To say that person no longer exists. / A tragic flawed fate going on and on and on.”
-- Mary Jo Bang

Source : Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

#Grief Quotes #Fate Quotes #Tragic Quotes

“A child, then a man, now a feather / Passing through a furious fire / Called time.”
-- Mary Jo Bang

Source : Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

#Children Quotes #Grief Quotes #Men Quotes

“Why are you not where you belong? / A black hat on a hook says nothing. / Ashes mirror ashes / In a mirroring window.”
-- Mary Jo Bang

Source : Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

#Grief Quotes #Mirrors Quotes #Black Quotes

“You are reduced / To the after-sorrow / That will last my lifetime. The hair-tearing / Grief of the mother / Whose child has been swept away.”
-- Mary Jo Bang

Source : Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

#Mother Quotes #Children Quotes #Grief Quotes

“The wheel begins its only if turning. / It had never stopped. / This is life's bargain that motion / Is hope.”
-- Mary Jo Bang

Source : Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

#Grief Quotes #Wheels Quotes

“I say every dog looks like no other but that isn't true. Not entirely. Difference is slippery.”
-- Mary Jo Bang

#Dog Quotes #Differences Quotes #Looks Quotes

“What is desire but the hard wire argument given to the mind's unstoppable mouth”
-- Mary Jo Bang

#Mind Quotes #Desire Quotes #Wire Quotes

“Bertrand Russell said, 'Electricity is not a thing like St. Paul's Cathedral; it is a way in which things behave.' And it's not 'they' who say, but Walter Benjamin who said, 'Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness, with the base and the banal.' In September, 1940, Benjamin died under ambiguous circumstances in the French-Spanish border town of Portbou, while attempting to flee the Nazis.”
-- Mary Jo Bang

#Historical Quotes #Borders Quotes #World Quotes

“And now the question: what do we do with the longing for what can destroy us?”
-- Mary Jo Bang

#Longing Quotes

“A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.”

“Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.”

Source : "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land". Book by Aime Cesaire, 1939.

“A brave action is often followed by grief. Do not let my resistance to grief stop the brave action.”

“To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.”

“Hey Nana, If Cinderella's glass slipper fits so perfectly, I wonder why it fell off along the way? I can't help but think that it was on purpose, to attract the prince's affections. No matter what I do, I'll still have the fate of a girl who just keeps getting hurt, wondering if she can be happy in this pointless, one man show?”

“God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.”

“You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny.”

“This tragic brow, these closed eyes, eyebrows raised and knotted.”

“It is tragic for our God, Who gave us His Son to die on the cross, to beg us to love Him.”

“She liked things that had been written by people who had lived short, ugly, and tragic lives. Or, who at least, were English.”