Top 25 Quotes by Anne Michaels of 36 - Page 2

Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.

Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.

Reading, Kissing, Veils

The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst.

Rain, Past, Shadow

Anne Michaels (2010). “Fugitive Pieces”, p.17, Emblem Editions

Now we're like planets, holding to each other from a great distance. [...] Now we're hundreds of miles apart, our short arms keep us lonely, no one hears what's in my head. [...] It's March, even the birds don't know what to do with themselves.

Anne Michaels

Lonely, Distance, Bird

History is the gradual instant

Anne Michaels

Instant

Anne Michaels (2010). “Fugitive Pieces”, p.77, Emblem Editions

Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.

Anne Michaels

World, Ghost, Enough

Anne Michaels (2009). “Fugitive Pieces”, p.78, A&C Black

...when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain.

Anne Michaels

Spiritual, Pain, Decision

Anne Michaels (2010). “Fugitive Pieces”, p.210, Emblem Editions

When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.

Anne Michaels

Gratitude, Sweet, Book

The spirit in the body is like wine in a glass; when it spills, it seeps into air and earth and light….It’s a mistake to think it’s the small things we control and not the large, it’s the other way around! We can’t stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident – or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.

Anne Michaels

Running, Mistake, Wine

Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.

Anne Michaels

Strong, Children, Past

Anne Michaels (2010). “Fugitive Pieces”, p.20, Emblem Editions