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Elizabeth Alexander QUOTES

Elizabeth Alexander QUOTES

1 " What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light. "

― Elizabeth Alexander

2 " Henry Ford believed the soul of a person is located in their last breath and so captured the last breath of his best friend Thomas Edison in a test tube and kept it evermore. It is on display at the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit, like Galileo’s finger in the church of Santa Croce, but Edison’s last breath is an invisible relic. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

3 " In all marriages there is struggle and ours was no different in that regard. But we always came to the other shore, dusted off, and said, There you are, my love. "

― Elizabeth Alexander

4 " I have not yet learned to use our television DVR. One of the points of marriage is that you split labor. In the olden days that meant one hunted and one gathered; now it means one knows where the tea-towels are kept and the other knows how to program the DVR, for why should we both have to know? "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

5 " In the absence of organized religion, faith abounds, in the form of song and art and food and strong arms. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

6 " Using the voice is a physical act, one that first announces the existence of the body of residence and then trumpets its arrival in a public space. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Black Interior: Essays

7 " It’s a fact: black people in this country die more easily, at all ages, across genders. Look at how young black men die, and how middle-aged black men drop dead, and how black women are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. The numbers graft to poverty but they also graph to stresses known and invisible. How did we come here, after all? Not with upturned chins and bright eyes but rather in chains, across a chasm. But what did we do? We built a nation, and we built its art. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

8 " The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story. Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

9 " Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light and that the ocean which washes away all traces on the sand leaves us a new canvas with each wave. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

10 " Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

11 " Loss is not felt in the absence of love. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

12 " Each of us made it possible for the other. We got something done. Each believed in the other unsurpassingly. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

13 " Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there. "

― Elizabeth Alexander

14 " ...now I know my capacity for awe
is infinite: this thirst is permanent,
the well bottomless, my good fortune vast. "

― Elizabeth Alexander

15 " friendship in marriage is its own thing: friendship in a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or a cappuccino every Sunday morning. Friendship in buying undershirts and underpants. Friendship in picking up a prescription or rescuing the towed car. Friendship in waiting for the phone call after the mammogram. Friendship in toast buttered just so. Friendship in shoveling the snow. I am the one you want to tell. You are the one I want to tell. "

― Elizabeth Alexander

16 " Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said
"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'")
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love
and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other? "

― Elizabeth Alexander , American Sublime: Poems

17 " They shared an unshakeable belief in beauty, in overflow, in everythingness, the bursting, indelible beauty in a world where there is so much suffering and wounding and pain. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

18 " It happened; it is part of who we are; it is our beauty and our terror. We must be gleaners from what life has set before us. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

19 " Each of us made it possible for the other. We got something done. Each believed in the other unsurpassingly. In all marriages there is struggle and ours was no different in that regard. But we always came to the other shore, dusted off, and said, There you are, my love. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World

20 " I been in sorrow’s kitchen and done licked out all the pots. Nobody knows the trouble I seen. Steal away to Jesus. I ain’t got long to stay here. "

― Elizabeth Alexander , The Light of the World