Stephen Dunn Quotes

I've had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches.
A heart is to be spent.

There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.

Although I know it's unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.

God knows nothing we don't know.
We gave him every word he ever said.

I've tried
to become someone else for a while,
only to discover that he, too, was me.

Oh abstractions are just abstract
until they have an ache in them.

Anyone out without the excuse of a dog
should be handcuffed
and searched for loneliness.

May you turn
stone, my daughter,
into silk. May you make men better
than they are.

When I stop becoming, that's when I worry.

All good poems are victories over something.

Everything I can't see / is at least as real as what I can.

Exaggerated sunsets / splashed with rain, odd collisions / of roots, animals, seeds. / I didn't like a thing I saw, / so much effort to be strange.

Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive.

Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.

I'll always deny that I kissed her.
I was just whispering into her mouth.

Isn't there a curious elegance in how one moment passes into another?

Better to be furious at one thing, become radiant with purpose. Better to love links and rhythms than all-embracing answers.

I love what's left after love has been tested.

Originality, of course, is what occurs when something new arises out of what's already been done.

I will try to disappoint you better than anyone ever has.

And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have.