Alice Oswald Quotes

Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand.

I lifted onto my toes, put my hands aroung his neck, and pulled him down. When our lips met, that first jolt... It was everything I hadn't felt with Simon, everything I wanted to feel. His hands went around my waist, pulling me closer--

Duende I can't remember her name. It's not as though I've been in bed with that many women. The truth is I can't even remember her face. I kind of know how strong her thighs were, and her beauty. But what I won't forget is the way she tore open the barbecued chicken with her hands, and wiped the grease on her breasts.

I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.

We have to look deeply at things in order to see. When a swimmer enjoys the clear water of the river, he or she should also be able to be the river.

And when you appear all the rivers sound in my body, bells shake the sky, and a hymn fills the world.

I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.

We touched with a softness that pushed through the skin into memory, like arms plunged into a river - we could feel the weight of each other's stones.

I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.

A song to me is a very tangible thing. I can feel it with my hands and see it with my eyes.

It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.

Sex was never as neat as the movies made it. Real sex was messy. Good sex was messier.

When I write my music I see all the rivers flowing... sensual, spiritual, religious, animal, intellectual.

This love thing awakened a group of slumbering senses in my body that I never even knew existed.

You men do not understand the delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand... but as for me, I swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep, strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place.

Your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words.

I hear footsteps and Four's hands wrap around my wrists. I let him pry my hands from my eyes. He encloses one of my hands perfectly between two of his. The warmth of his skin overwhelms the ache in my fingers from holding the bars. "You all right?" he asks, pressing our hands together. "Yeah." He starts to laugh.

They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising.

I put my forehead on his collarbone, place one hand on his chest. Its rhythm reassures me: He is real, and he is now.

Snapshots that have been taken of me working show something I was not aware of at all, that over and over again I'm holding my own body or my own hands exactly like the person I'm photographing. I never knew I did that, and obviously what I'm doing is trying to feel, actually physically feel, the way he or she feels at the moment I'm photographing them in order to deepen the sense of connection.

It's only his thumb brushing slowly across the lower edge of my lip, but it's as if time slows and the sweep of that thumb below my mouth takes forever. It is no spell that I know of, but it holds such magic, I can scarcely breath. He pulls his hand away fast, aware of what he's done. But his touch lingers.

I'm totally within the music. I'M LOST.

The river itself has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the river; in the end it is no longer the river. What we call the headwaters is only a selection from among the innumerable sources which flow together to compose it. At what point in its course does the Mississippi become what the Mississippi means?

For me, love is very non-academic. Love, it’s a very physical thing. I don’t mean physical in terms of - I mean, it can be sexual. But those moments when I’m aware of the fact that I love someone or love something, it really manifests physically.

We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.