Stephanie Hemphill QUOTES

4 " I cannot be assured of
exactly what I created
be it madness and monster
or beauty and light. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

5 " Perhaps it is easier
For others
To believe in you
Than it is
To believe
In yourself. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined

6 " I understand now my final purpose--
through my words and deeds
to inspire others
to find hope and strength
to speak and act.

The girls who fear
the fire inside themselves,
I burned for them. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined

7 " I fret for Sylvia.
She appears anchored

to the idea of sinking,
which is silly when she so clearly

soars above almost everyone. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

8 " We built a world of words
and yet none satisfy now. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

9 " She said the night was March and black
and that the hill where he kissed her
and enveloped her in his arms
was a sea of grass and she rooted
to the ground like a sapling,
like it was natural and yet
all created for her moment of romance. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

10 " The tides here are too rough. I sink here, happy only when I hoard my little blue sleeping pills, stash the blades of my razor. I accumulate a drawer of drop-out devices, so by December I can escape to a Merry Christmas. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

11 " Why uproot
a perfectly healthy
white blazing star
from the soil
to allow room
for a roadside weed? "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Wicked Girls

12 " It may be safe to walk,
but where do you go
when all directions wear
the same black ashen despair? "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Wicked Girls

13 " If I were a man
I might not wear the cloak
of anonymity. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

14 " Inside a book, she captures all that's lost. She journals so her words won't fly away. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

15 " She breaks. She's sick. Throw a rope, a net. She falls like a shot-up plane. Help her find the landing strip, Her feet are wet— She'll learn, she'll train. She walks a rope on fire, “Look Ma, no hands. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath

16 " All you know is
you must change sail
to catch it. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Wicked Girls

17 " I see my future
now not as something
intangible like a dream,
but like a boat
meeting land
after time spent at sea,
a destination I will reach. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

18 " The trees' bare bony fingers
point crookedly
towards Heaven or Hell
or worse than that, towards nowhere. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , Wicked Girls

19 " I want to stay young
and pure and free,
unstained by the sin of Eve. "

― Stephanie Hemphill , The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined