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

80 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

35 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.

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

Louise Glück

Dream, Soul, Speak

20 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

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

Louise Glück

May, Lasts, Life Is

30 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

24 Copy quote
Intense love always leads to mourning.

Louise Glück

Mourning, Intense, Intense Love

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

Louise Glück

Travel, Memorable, Forgotten

17 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

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

Louise Glück

Brain, Honor

10 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.

20 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

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

Louise Glück

Sister, Two, Dancer

32 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

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

Louise Glück

Loss, Birth, Hard

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

Louise Glück

Winter, Should Have, Despair

5 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

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

Louise Glück

Saws, Firsts, Certain

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

Louise Glück

Goodbye, Saying Goodbye, Veils

7 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

16 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

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

Louise Glück

Form

6 Copy quote
Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond— surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves. I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.

Louise Glück

Loneliness, Heart, Echoes

4 Copy quote
The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me.

Louise Glück

Feelings, Mind, Great Things

7 Copy quote

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Louise Glück

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Born: April 22, 1943
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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