Anna Margolin Quotes

Yearning conquers fear.

Drunk from the bitter truth,/I refuse all other wine.

The authentic artist carries within himself another world to which the ordinary person has no access. The great value of the poet is that he enriches us with new, thoroughly experienced feelings, with unseen or differently seen landscapes.

During the whole journey I thought about my mother. Somehow I now found her easier to understand; I felt closer to her-she had been transformed into a sister in suffering.

Long and sorrowful stretched out those days.

Somewhere in the world, in a city/I am flowering like a lily.

This is how it always goes: when my life becomes dismal and sombre, I delve into my past and select sparks of pure joy, of untainted happiness and use them to light up my blackened soul. And here it is, my beautiful dream: A quiet, trembling night spread its wings over the blooming valley, shrouding it in starless obscurity.

Why must one rhyme?... My work demands otherwise. I require bad rhymes because I don't want good ones... I know shvayg rhymes with tsvayg and shtayg; lebn with shvebn and shtrebn; himl with driml... but I require something different. I am insulted by the mechanical precision of the conventional rhyme. Somewhere, perhaps in only one syllable, the words should agree. I want the third and fourth lines to be subtly evocative of the first line with the colour of a word, with a sound that is but a shadow, a pale echo of the previously used sound.

My books, my great friends, gaze down on me with quiet resentment, calling me to them.

She of the cold marble breasts

The moment had passed, and, disquieted, she walked away from me, carrying within her an ocean of pain and happiness, a wild storm of conflict and struggle.

even if he brought me the worst unhappiness, even if he should cause my soul to age terribly, there's one thing that he could never kill inside me-my striving for higher things, my ardent longing for the mountain peak.

I know that my devils have knives instead of teeth, and snakes instead of fingers. I can't do very much about that. I can't just get rid of them.

Reality and dreams are weaving together, flowing into each other and I don't know where one ends and the other begins.

I am now old and weary. Life storms and seethes just as before, casting incandescent yearnings into human souls, summoning them to happiness and suffering, but life no longer knocks on my door: its waves do not reach as far as my threshold. I have already drained my glass to the very dregs. I am weary. My lonely days, my sleepless nights, pass in peaceful silence-without joy, without pain, without desire. With each new day and each passing night I creep one step closer to eternal peace and calm-to death. And the closer I get to death the more intently my gaze lingers on my tear-soaked, paper-garland-crowned youth. During sleepless nights I see, paraded before me, the shadows of those who bore light or shade in my soul, causing it to quake out of love or hatred.