Jack Gilbert Quotes

the intermittent breeze carried her scent to me again and again , singing in another language of memories from another form .

A book should be a garden that fits in the hands. Word-petals of color. Stems of strength. roots of truth. Turn a page and turn the seasons. Read the sentence and enjoy the roses.

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling eventide ere they give themselves up wholly to feeling...

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories.

All in green went my love riding

Two things make the women unforgettable, their tears and their perfume

In Egypt, I loved the perfume of the lotus. A flower would bloom in the pool at dawn, filling the entire garden with a blue musk so powerful it seemed that even the fish and ducks would swoon. By night, the flower might wither but the perfume lasted. Fainter and fainter, but never quite gone. Even many days later, the lotus remained in the garden. Months would pass and a bee would alight near the spot where the lotus had blossomed, and its essence was released again, momentary but undeniable.

Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.

You cannot analyze a kiss any more than you can dissect the fragrance of flowers.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty.

Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You've got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven's "Pastoral." A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.

Words,words filled the night like the fragrance of invisible flowers.

Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.

What a name! Was it love or praise? Speech half-asleep or song half-awake? I must learn Spanish, one of these days, Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

The beauty of fragrance is that it speaks to your heart and hopefully someone else's.

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.

Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years?

Is it possible to say "It was a beautiful morning at the end of November" without feeling like Snoopy?

The living model, the naked body of a woman, is the privileged seat of feeling, but also of questioning... The model must mark you, awaken in you an emotion which you seek in turn to express.

Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.

Griddle cakes, pancakes, hot cakes, flapjacks: why are there four names for grilled batter and only one word for love?