Lucille Clifton Quotes
-
blessing the boats (at saint mary’s) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that
-
I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.
-
won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.
-
Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing.
-
I don't go get a poem. It calls me and I accept it.
-
In the bigger scheme of things the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that's a whole different thing.
-
Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.
-
Children when they ask you why your mama so funny say she is a poet she don't have no sense
-
telling the truth about children's lives is radical.
-
I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired.
-
born in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did i see to be except myself?
-
I keep hearing tree talk water words and i keep knowing what they mean.
-
To be a good poet, you must care more about the writing, than the writer.
-
The end of a thing, is never the end, something is always being born like a year of a baby.
-
the lesson of the falling leaves the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is god i agree with the leaves
-
We need new words for what this is, this hunger entering our loneliness like birds, stunning our eyes into rays of hope. we need the flutter that can save us, something that will swirl across the face of what we have become and bring us grace.
-
What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.
-
Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.
-
You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.
-
All people, even one's own children, come with baggage. When they're little, you have to help them carry it. But when they grow up, you have to do that difficult thing of setting their baggage down and taking up your own again.
-
Even when the universe made it quite clear to me that I was mistaken in my certainties ... I did not break. The shattering of my sureties did not shatter me.
-
I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
-
they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and I keep on remembering mine
-
Tell the truth... maybe just to see clearly, as clearly as possible.