Marisa Crane

The listlessness of it all, the profit off depression, the extinction of an entire species, the chlorinated connections- poisoned just to appear clean.

Standing on the doorstep of desire, I hold this bouquet like a gun and these vows like a petition for the death penalty.

If we are simply energy, neither created or destroyed, and if a body is just a body, celestial or not, why don’t you come over here and we will make collisions out of moments.

I’m just a broken person looking for other broken people who may have gotten shards of me stuck in their feet and aren’t too concerned about pulling them out.

Don’t ever let anyone keep your heart on a shelf just to take it down whenever it is convenient for them to feel.

This is not new territory. Stop lights like lullabies write my eulogy.

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.

To think is to practice brain chemistry.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

The advantage of doing one’s praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts – a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

The dice of God are always loaded.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.