Louise Glück Quotes

Quotes about:

Earth Heart Hunger Mothers

We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.

Louise Glück

Memories, Childhood, Looks

69 Copy quote
The master said you must write what you see / But what I see does not move me / The master answered Change what you see.

Louise Glück

Moving, Writing, Doe

18 Copy quote
The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.

Louise Glück

May, Lasts, Life Is

25 Copy quote
At the end of my suffering/there was a door.

Louise Glück

Doors, Suffering, Ends

"Wild Iris". Book by Louise Glück, therumpus.net. November 1, 1993.

3 Copy quote
From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.

Louise Glück

Pain, Childhood

16 Copy quote
I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary. It is analogous to the unseen.

Louise Glück

Vocabulary, Silence, Wish

26 Copy quote
The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.

Louise Glück

Dream, Soul, Speak

15 Copy quote
Intense love always leads to mourning.

Louise Glück

Mourning, Intense, Intense Love

19 Copy quote
What was difficult was the travel, which, on arrival, is forgotten.

Louise Glück

Travel, Memorable, Forgotten

11 Copy quote
That's why I'm not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart is also a wound to the mind

Louise Glück

Heart, Mind, Trusted

8 Copy quote
It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.

Louise Glück

Art, Swim, Desire

21 Copy quote
Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.

Louise Glück

Sister, Two, Dancer

22 Copy quote
Honor the words that enter and attach to your brain.

Louise Glück

Brain, Honor

5 Copy quote
The unsaid, for me, exerts great power.

Louise Glück

Writing, Unsaid, Great Power

"Disruption, Hesitation, Silence". Article by Louise Glück, The American Poetry Review, Volume 22, No. 5, pp. 30-32, www.jstor.org. September-October 1993.

16 Copy quote
I caution you as I was never cautioned: You will never let go, you will never be satiated. You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger. Your body will age, you will continue to need. You will want the earth, then more of the earth-- Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond. It is encompassing, it will not minister. Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you. It will not keep you alive.

Louise Glück

Letting Go, Sublime, Age

28 Copy quote
You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

Louise Glück

Winter, Should Have, Despair

2 Copy quote
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.

Louise Glück

Loss, Birth, Hard

2 Copy quote
I pretended indifference…even in the presence of love, in the presence of hunger. And the more deeply I felt, the less able I was to respond.

Louise Glück

Able, Indifference, Hunger

18 Copy quote
I’m like the child who buries
her head in the pillow
so as not to see, the child who tells herself
that light causes sadness—

Louise Glück

Children, Sadness, Light

14 Copy quote
At first I saw you everywhere. Now only in certain things, at longer intervals.

Louise Glück

Saws, Firsts, Certain

16 Copy quote
As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles. She was buoyant by nature; she wanted to travel, go to the theater, go to museums. What he wanted was to lie on the couch with the Times over his face, so that death, when it came, wouldn't seem a significant change.

Louise Glück

Mother, Lying, Father

9 Copy quote
The love of form is a love of endings.

Louise Glück

Form

1 Copy quote
The Red Poppy The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me. I have a lord in heaven called the sun, and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, were you like me once, long ago, before you were human? Did you permit yourselves to open once, who would never open again? Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered.

Louise Glück

Brother, Heart, Fire

15 Copy quote
To raise the veil. To see what you're saying goodbye to.

Louise Glück

Goodbye, Saying Goodbye, Veils

2 Copy quote
Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's voice couldn't make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can't love another human being you have no place in the world.

Louise Glück

Mother, Giving Up, Father

9 Copy quote

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Louise Glück

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Born: April 22, 1943
Occupation: Poet
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