Phil Elverum Quotes

The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.

It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.

I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not.

To-night when the full-bellied moon swallows the stars. Grant that I know.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding-- Riding--riding-- The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

The light of the moon is all we've got to go on...

I believe that whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you... stranger.

you're rowing by wordlight

I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement.

The clouds were drifting over the moon at their giddiest speed, at one time wholly obscuring her, at another, suffering her to burst forth in full splendor and shed her light on all the objects around; anon, driving over her again, with increased velocity, and shrouding everything in darkness.

They do not need the sun. Who needs the sun when the eyes glow? Darkness. A woolen fog has wrapped the earth, has dropped a heavy curtain. From far away, from beyond the curtain, comes the sound of drops falling on stone. Far, far away - the autumn, people, tomorrow. ("The North")

In winter there is no heat, no light, no noon, evening touches morning, there is fog, and mist, the window is frosted, and you cannot see clearly. The sky is but the mouth of a cave. The whole day is the cave.... Frightful season! Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.

And whiter grows the foam, The small moon lightens more; And as I turn me home, My shadow walks before.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves The brilliant moon and all the milky sky And all that famous harmony of leaves Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

There was no sun; there was no light. I was dying. I couldn't remember what the sky looked like. But I didn't die. I was lost to a sea of cold, and then I was reborn into a world of warmth.

And when the night is cloudy There is still a light that shines on me Shine on until tomorrow, let it Be...

That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.

If hers are the stars in the nighttime sky, mine are the haunted empty spaces in between.

It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

Lost, so small amid that dark, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors of television sky.

I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.

But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know that they all were?