Persephone Quotes:

Persephone herself is but a voice or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom, among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom.

- D. H. Lawrence

source: D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.6848, Delphi Classics

topic: Passion, Dark, Voice, Persephone

Spring is about to spring. Persephone is coming back and the ice is groaning, about to break with the exquisite and deafening roar. It's a time for madness; a time for our fangs to come down and our eyes to glaze over so that the beast in us can sing with unmitigated joy. Oh yes, ecstasy, I welcome thee!

- J. Christopher Stevens

topic: Spring, Eye, Ice, Groaning, Persephone

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark.

- D. H. Lawrence

topic: Flower, Dark, Blue, Persephone

In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.

- E. M. Forster

topic: Beautiful, Men, August, Persephone

Take from my palms, to soothe your heart, a little honey, a little sun, in obedience to Persephone's bees. You can't untie a boat that was never moored, nor hear a shadow in its furs, nor move through thick life without fear. For us, all that's left is kisses tattered as the little bees that die when they leave the hive. Deep in the transparent night they're still humming, at home in the dark wood on the mountain, in the mint and lungwort and the past. But lay to your heart my rough gift, this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees that once made a sun out of honey.

- Osip Mandelstam

topic: Moving, Heart, Home, Moored, Little Bee

I am Persephone" she said, her voice thin and papery. "Welcome, demigods. Nico squashed a pomegranate under his boot. "Welcome? After last time, you've got the nerve to welcome me?" I shifted uneasily, because talking that way to a god can get you blasted into dust bunnies. "Um, Nico-" "It's all right," Persephone said coldly. "We had a little family spat." "Family spat?" Nico cried. "You turned me into a dandelion!

- Rick Riordan

topic: Dust, Talking, Voice, Spats, Demigods

Husband, we talked about this," Persephone chided. "You can't go around incinerating every hero. Besides, he's brave. I like that." Hades rolled his eyes. "You liked that Orpheus fellow too. Look how well that turned out.

- Rick Riordan

topic: Husband, Hero, Eye, Orpheus, Persephone

When I did see the story of Persephone, I was really drawn to it. Persephone, the goddess of spring, was kept from Olympus by her mother, Demeter, because Demeter was very worried that the gods of Olympus would do something terrible to her.

- Meg Cabot

source: "Meg Cabot's teen escapism and empowered heroines". Interview with Ashley Strickland, www.cnn.com. May 12, 2011.

topic: Mother, Spring, Olympus, Demeter, Persephone

I was thinking about framing, and how so much of what we think about our lives and our personal histories revolves around how we frame it. The lens we see it through, or the way we tell our own stories. We mythologize ourselves. So I was thinking about Persephone's story, and how different it would be if you told it only from the perspective of Hades. Same story, but it would probably be unrecognizable. Demeter's would be about loss and devastation. Hades's would be about love.

- Kiersten White

topic: Loss, Thinking, Perspective, Personal History, Demeter

I'm very nearly drunk enough to be transcendent," Calla said after a space. She was not the only psychic drinking, but she was the closest one to transcendence. Persephone peered dubiously into the bottom of her own glass. In a very small voice (her voice was always small), she said sadly, "I am not drunk at all." Maura offered, "It's the Russian in you." "Estonian,"Persephone replied.

- Maggie Stiefvater

topic: Drinking, Psychics, Voice, Closest, Callas

It is true that I am a writer, and I was married to a composer, and I have lived in a small village in New England, but my children are not named Heracles and Persephone, and my daughter doesn't disappear underground every six months and emerge in the spring.

- Jamaica Kincaid

topic: Mother, Daughter, Children, Persephone, Small Villages

You know what would help this boy?" Demeter mused. "Farming." Persephone rolled her eyes. "Mother-" "Six months behind a plow. Excellent character building.

- Rick Riordan

topic: Mother, Character, Eye, Demeter, Persephone