Top 15 Anna Margolin Quotes

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.

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.

The creative person wears a mask... just like a sculptor wears an apron."

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.

She of the cold marble breasts

Say this: until her death

I want, angry and tender one,

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

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

What was she trying to tell me? Did she want to say that life was empty and grey, pitiless in its ordinariness? Like a wicked serpent life wraps its coils around your airy dreams and winged desires, smothering them with its venomous breath, killing them on the spot before they have a chance to bloom. Your struggles will be in vain, your attempts to free yourself from the ordinary, to rise above-life will ridicule and crush you without mercy. Is that what she wanted to say? Or did she want to say that love is small and ephemeral?-A pale spark against the dark back-drop of life; flashing but for a moment, only to vanish in the thick darkness? It cannot open up cloudless, starlit skies; cannot pour blue light over the cloudy paths of life. It is easily extinguished with only a little water; even its purist flame does not burn eternal. Is that what she wanted to say? Or perhaps she wanted to remind me that however beautiful and jubilant life can be, however brightly the sun of love can shimmer, embracing you with its gentle rays, there will always be, standing behind your shoulder, a merciless enemy as old as life itself-death. It stands behind you as you stretch out your hand toward the happiness calling out to you nearby; as you lie in the arms of your ardent beloved and dream of eternity; as you begin a great project and in passionate desires see it through to its end-it is always there behind you, with a cold smile on its bony face, ready to steal away your life, your love, your creative accomplishments-What was she trying to tell me?

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.

I already had a lover at that time, and whenever a letter from him arrived it brought with it light, lustre, and profound happiness, transforming all the days that followed into one long uninterrupted holiday. I remember one of those days with particular clarity. I'd just been handed a letter from my lover and secluded myself in one of the hidden corners at the far end of the garden to read it. I drank down the words like strong, intoxicating wine; a wave of hot joy enveloped me entirely.

I lie awake with open eyes during sleepless nights and look at them in cold surprise, and I seek to understand how these strange, distant people could have once been so close and dear to me. What magical thread bound me to them? And how had they severed that thread? And why was this all so alien and meaningless to me now?

She looked at me and yet she did not see me.

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.