Linda Pastan Quotes

I have dreamed of our bed as if it were a shore where we would be washed up, not this striped mattress we must cover with sheets. [from "After an Absence"]

Grief is a circular staircase.

I regret the way pain has taught me nothing.

Poetry is not a code to be broken but a way of seeing with the eyes shut.

Spring is the shortest season.

Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open--that one and that--and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a cow in sweetest pasture. For life is continuous as long as they wait to be read--these inked paths opening into the future, page after page, every book its own receding horizon. And I hold them, one in each hand, a curious ballast weighing me here to earth.

What we want is never simple.