Quotessence
Home / Authors / Anne Michaels Books
Anne Michaels

Anne Michaels Books

Poet

Fugitive Pieces

A source page for quotes linked to Anne Michaels.

0 quotes

Held

A source page for quotes linked to Anne Michaels.

0 quotes

Skin Divers

A source page for quotes linked to Anne Michaels.

0 quotes

Related Quotes

“And she knew for the first time that someone can wire your skin in a single evening, and that love arrives not by accumulating to a moment, like a drop of water focused on the tip of a branch - it is not the moment of bringing your whole life to another - but rather, it is everything you leave behind. At that moment. Even that night, the night he touched one inch of her in the dark, how simply Avery seemed to accept the facts - that they were on the edge of lifelong happiness and, therefore, inescapable sorrow. It was as if, long ago, a part of him had broken off inside, and now finally, he recognised the dangerous fragment that had been floating in his system, causing him intermittent pain over the years. As if he could now say of that ache: "Ah. It was you.”

LovePain
Book:The Winter Vault
Create image

“She did not understand for some time why he had plucked her - middle-aged, a pear turning soft in the bowl - from the bookshop. At first, she thought it was because of what she'd been reading behind the counter - Mr. Ayles never objected to his staff reading once the chores were done. And then she thought it was because he had identified her as a specimen of a particular kind, a woman who, for one last moment, was still able to be wounded in that one way; who might, with a single touch, be brought back to life exactly once more. She was convinced it was this gratitude in particular - ignited by his pity - that he could never have enough of, one source of the great flow of gratitude his presence seemed to arouse in everyone.”

Middle Aged Women
Book:Held
Create image

“The spirit in the body is like wine in a glass; when it spills, it seeps into air and earth and light….It’s a mistake to think it’s the small things we control and not the large, it’s the other way around! We can’t stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident – or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.”

ThinkingWayHumansEnoughMomentsBodyLightRunningEarthSpiritValuesOrderCausesMistakeFateAirWineForgottenGlassesDetailsAccidentsTinyExtrasSmall ThingsSpillsHuman Values
Author:Anne Michaels
Create image

“When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.”

WorldYearsBookFoundParentWaterBornSimpleFourSweetReturnGratitudeOrdinaryHotCleanExtraordinaryMeatShirtsMealsApplesCampsVegetablesFour YearsRefugeOrangeJuiceLiberatedForksFugitivePotencyHot WaterMattressesOrdinarinessOrdinary World
Author:Anne Michaels
Create image

“The shadow-past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. It steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name.”

PastSpiritNamesHappenedCallingMountainMouthsShadowRainLongingShoesSmellInvisibleBiographiesUndoneSteersMagnetismTorque
Book:Fugitive Pieces
Create image