Top 15 Joanna Newsom Quotes

Joy! Again, around—a pause, a sound—a song:
a way a lone a last a loved a long.
A cave, a grave, a day: arise, ascend.
(Areion, Rharian; go free and graze. Amen.)
A shore, a tide, unmoored—a sight, abroad:
A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god).
No time. No flock. No chime, no clock. No end.
White star, white ship—Nightjar, transmit: transcend!

Love is not a symptom of time.
Time is just a symptom of love

So it would seem to be true: when cruel birth debases, we forget.
When cruel death debases,
we believe it erases all the rest
that precedes.
But stand brave, life-liver,
bleeding out your days
in the river of time.
Stand brave:
time moves both ways

Now the towns and forests, highways and plains,
fall back in circles like an emptying drain.
And I won't come round this way again,
where the lonely wind abides,
and you will not take my heart, alive.

In martial wind, and in clarion rain, we minced into battle, wincing in pain; not meant for walking, backs bound in twine:
not angel or devil,
but level, in time.

Hey little leaf, lying on the ground—
now you're turning slightly brown!
Why don't you come back on the tree,
turn the color green the way you ought to be?

And never will I wed.
I'll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life,
and ever hold my breath,
till I may be the diver's wife.

Recall the word you gave:
to count your way across the depths of this arid world,
where you would yoke the waves,
and lay a bed of shining pearls! I dream it every night:
the ringing of the pail,
the motes of sand dislodged,
the shucking, quick and bright;
the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white.

I know we must abide
each by the rules that bind us here:
the divers, and the sailors, and the women on the pier.

And in an infinite regress:
Tell me, why is the pain of birth
lighter borne than the pain of death?

lists of sins and solemn vows
don't make you any friends.

All we saw was that Time is taller than Space is wide.
That's why we got bound to a round desert island,
'neath the sky where our sailors have gone.
Have they drowned, in those windy highlands?
Highlands away, my John.

As the day is long,
so the well runs dry,
and we came to see Time is taller
than Space is wide.
And we bade goodbye
to the Great Divide:
found unlimited simulacreage to colonize!

What’s redacted will repeat,
and you cannot learn that you burn when you touch the heat,
so we touch the heat,
and we cut facsimiles of love and death
(just separate holes in sheets
where you cannot breathe, and you cannot see).

In December of that year,
the word came down that she was here.
The days grew shorter.
I was sure, if she came 'round,
I’d hold my ground. I'd endure.
But they'd alluded to a change
that came to pass,
and Spring, deranged,
weeping grass and sleepless,
broke herself upon my windowglass.
And I could barely breathe, for seeing
all the splintered light that leaked her fissures,
fleeing, launched in flight:
unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding,
bleached the night with dawn, deleting,
in that high sun,
after our good run,
when the spirit bends
beneath knowing it must end.