Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Lorna Dee Cervantes
23 quotes
“I am not driven, so much, by intentions, as I am stunned into being by intent.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Author's Note to Drive: The First Quartet: New Poems, 1980–2005
“I intended all of that. And this is what I like about this, and drawings like draw, like the gunman. I call this the shoot out, the high noon draw. That was also my intent as well as drawings; draw a bucket back to the cables and the whole idea about drawings…”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how drawings are used in all of its forms as a recurrent theme in From the Cables of Genocide in “Poetry Saved My Life: An Interview with Lorna Dee Cervantes” (Spring 2007)
“This is the conscience of trauma. This is a grief book. That's how I refer to it, privately. It's my grief book because my mother was murdered, and raped, and battered. Then they burned the house down. I was dealing with that and with my divorce, and all of that stuff When people ask me, do you believe that everybody can write poetry, in a certain sense, yes, in a certain sense, no. Not everybody can write poetry…”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how trauma ties into her poem “Drawing” from the poetry collection From the Cables of Genocide in “Poetry Saved My Life: An Interview with Lorna Dee Cervantes” (Spring 2007)
“When I first went to Mexico in 1974 and was involved in Chicano teatro—Mexican American guerilla theater—I realized that my politics and my poetry could merge; suddenly it wasn’t just for me. Before then, I didn’t share this poetry; I kept it in notebooks…”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how her politics and poetry merged in “A Conversation with Lorna Dee Cervantes” in World Literature Today (2010)
“They spotlight those who walk like a dream, with no one waiting in the shadows to palm them back to living.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My palm cupped her mouth As I kissed her, the flesh Of my hand between us.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She would not be silent and still. She would live, arrogantly, having wrestled her death and won.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And late that night I tasted the last of the sweet fruit, sucked the rich pit and thought nothing of death.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We knew, love, and that was all we were ever offered.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the years that separate, in the tongues that divide and conquer, in the love that was a language in itself, you never spoke, never regret. Even that last morning I saw you with blood in your eyes, blood on your mouth, the blood pushing out of you in purple blossoms.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I ran flushed and shadowed by no one alone I settled stiff in mouth with the words women gave me.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And finally, it is me only guessing at what secrets or hatreds they share.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have learned the serenity of a mockingbird, the justice of a crow, blue jay's strength; I've dipped their feathers in blood to seal the pact—my path.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's sky and death shimmering the waves.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our dreams wafted over the sullen skyline like crazy meteors of flying embers: a glow in the heart all night.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I come from a long line of eloquent illiterates whose history reveals what words don't say. Our anger is our way of speaking, the gesture is an utterance more pure than word.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am driven from this world, alive. I come to this world, in dreams.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other, arcing their bodies in grim determination to find what is good, what is given them to find. These are warriors distancing themselves from history. They find peace in the way they contain the wind and are gone.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I started writing for the same reason I breathe-because I had to.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For me, poetry has been an exercise in freedom. Freedom is like a muscle-the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. Poetry can give you a sense of choice. It's free on every level. Language and memory have no price tags on them. You have limitless choices-in form, language, subject matter-that spill over into life.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things come to me, they speak to me. Stanley Kunitz has had an enormous impact on my life. He once said that poetry is only half language, the other half is a quality of perception, a function of the imagination, a particular form of paying attention. For me, it's a stilling of the self, waiting for this language to speak to me before I utter it.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading African American women poets politicized me. And it was the fact that poetry politicized me that had to do with then saving my life. Then all of the sudden, I started questioning; that's the dynamic of oppression, and especially as a child and as a woman, a girl coming into it. You look around, and you don't see anybody like you in positions of power, and you don't even question it. You just assume that you are not going to achieve anything and [that] no one expects anything from you. And so when I started reading this poetry, then I started questioning and questioning real hard. And I got angry.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how African American poetry influenced her in “Poetry Saved My Life: An Interview with Lorna Dee Cervantes” (Spring 2007)
“I was a street kid by day and by night I was a library kid. At the library I would go the shelves alphabetically. I was drawn to anyone with a female name, with a Latino or Spanish name. There were very, very few. But as a teenager I discovered African American poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first. Then Phillis Wheatley. I really identified with this slave woman writing poetry to assert and affirm her humanity. Suddenly my eyes were open to history. There was a whole explosion of African-American women poets-Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan. I have a poem in my head that's going to take me years to write down. Its working title is "On Thanking Black Muses." I owe them, because poetry really changed my life, saved it.”
Lorna Dee Cervantes (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source