No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.

... the attempt to render visual intricacy makes words feel unwieldy, like sacks of meaning that must be lugged into place, dragged here and there, then still don't fell accurate.

Sentimental assertions are always a form of detachment; they confront the acute, terrible awareness of individual pain, the sharp particularity of loss or the fierce individuality of passion with the dulling universal certainty of platitude.

All my life I've lived with a future which constantly diminishes but never vanishes.

There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem.

The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.

Grief does not seem to me to be a choice. Whether or not you think grief has value, you will lose what matters to you. The world will break your heart. So I think we’d better look at what grief might offer us. It’s like what Rilke says about self-doubt: it is not going to go away, and therefore you need to think about how it might become your ally.