Jack Gilbert Quotes

We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones.

I have always had a fascination about what's inside a human being.

Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one that people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving. Remember that she was the woman with the instrument strapped to her body in the long, moon-slit night.

Under your skin the moon is alive.

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.

Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.

The inner life must overcome the flesh or the flesh will overcome and destroy the inner life.

Does the sun ask itself, "Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?" No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?" No it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies?" No, it burns, it shines.

She could've looked at the tiny miracles in front of her: my feet, my hands, my fingers, the shape of my shoulders beneath my jacket, my human body, but she only stared at my eyes. The wind whipped again, through the trees, but it had no force, no power over me. The cold bit at my fingers, but they stayed fingers. "Grace," I said, very softly. "Say something." "Sam," she said, and I crushed her to me.

The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.

I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about the secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Mr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him.

She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves… They belonged to her her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and they they concerned no one but herself.

If sculpture can really deal with the body, because we all inhabit ourselves, and if sculpture can really do that, which it is supposed to be able to do, and through it ask questions, philosophical questions, about being, I think these are all things we work on, all of us in our different ways, so perhaps somewhere in there, there are moments where dumb objects can speak.

The most important part of our lives-our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations-takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate or destroy, but which it is powerless to enrich.

This is what I have heard at last the wind in December lashing the old trees with rain unseen rain racing along the tiles under the moon wind rising and falling wind with many clouds trees in the night wind.

One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives.

Anything having to do with what is happening inside people has political significance to me. That is why I like the term "holistic politics."

Inner space is the real frontier.

I love a natural look in pictures. I like people with a feeling one way or another - it shows an inner life. I like to see that there’s something going on inside them.

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

Writing was my real life and I was more at home with the people of my imagination than with the best I met in the objective world.

In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.

Life isn't some vertical or horizontal line -- you have your own interior world, and it's not neat.

Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.