I have a profound resistance to the idea that a reader could say, 'Oh, well, that's her story.' We should all be interested, no matter where we come from, or who our parents are. It's not my province; it's ours. These questions concern us all. Anne Michaels More Quotes by Anne Michaels More Quotes From Anne Michaels Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city. Anne Michaels healing inspirational book Long after you’ve forgotten someone’s voice, you can still remember the sound of their happiness or their sadness. You can feel it in your body. Anne Michaels sadness voice long Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful. Anne Michaels important beautiful looks The truth doesn't care what we think of it. Anne Michaels care thinking Love makes you see a place differently, just as you hold differently an object that belongs to someone you love. If you know one landscape well, you will look at all other landscapes differently. And if you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another. Anne Michaels landscape love looks No one is born just once. If you're lucky, you'll emerge again in someone's arms; or unlucky, wake when the long tail of terror brushes the inside of your skull. Anne Michaels skulls love long When you put a tremendous amount of love into your work, as in any relationship, you can't know - you can only hope - that what you're offering will in some way be received. You shape your love to artistic demands, to the rigors of your genre. But still, it's a labor of love, and it's the nature of love that you must give it freely. Anne Michaels demand offering giving Translation is a kind of transubstantiation; one poem becomes another. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning, the strict crib that sacrifices meaning to exactitude. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life; both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what's between the lines, the mysterious implications. Anne Michaels sacrifice philosophy moving Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them! Anne Michaels silence stones helping The shadow-past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. It steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name. Anne Michaels names rain past When you are alone - at sea, in the polar dark - an absence can keep you alive. The one you love maintains your mind. But when she's merely across the city, this is an absence that eats you to the bone. Anne Michaels cities sea dark Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil. Anne Michaels veils kissing reading But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace. Anne Michaels grace darkness world I'm naive enough to think that love is always good no matter how long ago, no matter the circumstances. Anne Michaels long-ago love-is thinking Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart's strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name. Anne Michaels heart blood thinking It is not a person’s depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent. Anne Michaels ascent depth path If love wants you; if you've been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold. Anne Michaels stars want blood There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child. Anne Michaels grief believe children The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart. Anne Michaels teaching teacher retirement Any given moment - no matter how casual, how ordinary - is poised, full of gaping life. Anne Michaels moments matter ordinary
