Stevie Smith Quotes

Not Waving but Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

I understand the power of sorrow, and I understand how far it can take us from ourselves if we let it.

She wants to go home, but nobody's home. That's why she lies, broken inside. With no place to go, no place to go, to dry her eyes, broken inside.

My Muse sits forlorn She wishes she had not been born She sits in the cold No word she says is ever told.

Me in a one-man tent crouching over carrier bag. It's not just the lowest point of the trip. It's the lowest point ever. In 38 years.

Alone in my room, wrapped in a blanket, I whimpered and talked aloud to myself, recalling the lost glory of my youth when I considered myself, and was considered by others, a bright and capable person. It seemed that was all gone now.

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.

For a long time, I didn't want to live.

He did not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home - for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler.

Loneliness is something you can't walk away from.

But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?

You have left me so long to struggle against death, alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!

Oh darkness, I feel like letting go.

Loneliness is the theme, and I play it like a symphony, in endless variations.

But solitude is sadness.' 'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.

In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well.

But it's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin And can't stand the company. Every fool's got a reason to feelin' sorry for himself And turn his heart to stone. Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell And I feel like I'm comin' home.

But he [Depression] just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He's going to make me sleep with him again tonight, I just know it.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.

The common denominator of all my friends is that they're dead.

My father's death, my move, and my frightening and difficult delivery created a tremendous amount of stress, pain, and sadness for me. I was practically devastated beyond recovery.

I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterical for a full day.