Quotes by Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee

A bruise, blue in the muscle, you impinge upon me. As bone hugs the ache home, so I’m vexed to love you, your body the shape of returns, your hair a torso of light, your heat I must have, your opening I’d eat, each moment of that soft-finned fruit, inverted fountain in which I don’t see me.

Home

Light

Love You

A door jumps out from shadows, then jumps away. This is what I’ve come to find: the back door, unlatched. Tooled by insular wind, it slams and slams without meaning to and without meaning.

Doors

Shadow

Wind

A poem is like a score for the human voice.

Humans

Score

Voice

And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain.

Dream

Multitudes

Vain

Brimming. That’s what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Sentences

Want

Could it be in longing we are most ourselves?

Longing

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

Apocalyptic

Revealing

Writing

I am that last, that final thing, the body in a white sheet listening.

Body

Listening

White

I don’t mind suffering as long as it’s really about something. I don’t mind great luck, if it’s about something. If it’s the hollow stuff, then there’s no gift, one way or the other.

Long

Luck

Mind

I’ve been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech-if not all human speech-is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breath in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder-they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we’re breathing in. The problem is, that when we’re breathing in, we can’t speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.

Blood

Oxygen

Thinking

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Apocalyptic

Attention

Blood

Body

Dad

Dark

Doors

Dream

Fate

Fathers Day

Hair

Home

Horse

Humans

Infinity

Joy

Language

Light

Listening

Long

Longing

Looks

Love You

Luck

Mean

Memories

Mind

Multitudes

Narrative

Oxygen

Pages

Painful

People

Potency

Prayer

Problem

Reading

Revealing

Riding

Score

Self

Sentences

Shadow

Storytelling

Suffering

Sweet

Texture

Thinking

Vain

Voice

The Future Blueprint

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Quotes by Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee

A bruise, blue in the muscle, you impinge upon me. As bone hugs the ache home, so I’m vexed to love you, your body the shape of returns, your hair a torso of light, your heat I must have, your opening I’d eat, each moment of that soft-finned fruit, inverted fountain in which I don’t see me.

A door jumps out from shadows, then jumps away. This is what I’ve come to find: the back door, unlatched. Tooled by insular wind, it slams and slams without meaning to and without meaning.

A poem is like a score for the human voice.

And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain.

Brimming. That’s what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Could it be in longing we are most ourselves?

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

I am that last, that final thing, the body in a white sheet listening.

I don’t mind suffering as long as it’s really about something. I don’t mind great luck, if it’s about something. If it’s the hollow stuff, then there’s no gift, one way or the other.

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Topics by Li-Young Lee

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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