“My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I'm naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.”
“He believes too much, and he knows too much. That's what we call mad.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Men see their Beatrice with a luminous shimmer, a numinous haze, a close and yet far quality: but what do women see?”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Surely goodness and mercy can be more choosy.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“My grief was excessive, but I recovered.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Move over, sensitive sad minds.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Description: the landscape's usually better for a sign of the human. But don't lug him in like an ambulent cabbage.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Wisdom increases and is a burden. I know too many people and why I should love them, and the thought that I love them imperfectly is a constant vexation. My half-life continues. The great error of the American condition: to forget that people are humanity--I don't mean in the cliche sense--but are a part of the whole stream of history, and, whatever else they may be in the Here and Now, should be respected and considered, and loved as far as possible and not thought of as students, colleagues, anonymous neighbors.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I trust all joy”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I prefer the still joy:
The wasp drinking at the edge of my cup;
A snake lifting its head;
A snail's music.”
Source: The Collected Poems
“Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long.”
“My great truth: it is possible to love the human race.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
“If there is not another life, there is at least another way to live.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“We live by being what we should not be.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Sure I'm crazy
But it ain't easy”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The grandeurs of the crazy man alone,
Himself the middle of a roaring world.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Act your heart. There's nothing else.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I'm blistered from insights.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The sun's never down for excessive men;
Their bellies light themselves a fire;
Who dare to romp from dawn to dawn.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I feel the weight of stars...”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“What's freedom for? To know eternity.”
“One teaches out of love: it's an impertinence, an imposition, in the end it's terrifying.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“I am a poet: I am always hungry.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The intuitive poet often begins most felicitously, but raptures are hard to sustain.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Money money money
Water water water”
Source: The Lost Son & Other Poems
“Dolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate gray standard faces.”
Source: The Lost Son & Other Poems
“I do not laugh; I do not cry;
I'm sweating out the will to die.
My past is sliding down the drain;
I soon will be myself again.”
“What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.”
Source: The Collected Poems
“To be less than you are is so easy: even a child needs no lessons in this.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Men are made by books.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Love makes me naked;
Propinquity's a harsh master;
O the songs we hide singing to ourselves!”
“It’s your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours. I hope I haunt you.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“After Mr. Richard M. Nixon, I feel that sincerity is no longer possible as a public attitude.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“In poetry, there are no casual readers.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The greatest assassin of life is haste.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Remind yourself once more of the absolute holiness of your task.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“People can and do understand poetry but they don't want to: it is a danger.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“What's the winter for?
To remember love.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The terrible energy of the dead.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The Siberian pitilessness, the essential ruthlessness of the Middle West as I knew it: an accepted thing.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“And it all seems to have meaning, even the broken machinery,
The abandoned oil wells, the rowboat sunk in the ice of winter...
Is this waste, this debris a necessary part of our energy?”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Those taught to creep become enchanted with such locomotion.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Talent talks; genius does.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Hatred of life can rise to a mystical state.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Even a piece of bad writing can have its own mysterious life, and be a fascination.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Civilization is overrated: but there isn't anything much else.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Will's a heady master: don't follow.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“The great mystery of Christianity is how it has lasted so long.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Listen to the haters: they may remind you of new ways to love.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
