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Quote by Louise Glück

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Faithful and Virtuous Night

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Author

Louise Glück
Louise Glück

Louise Glück (born April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020. Born in New York City to Hungarian Jewish immigrants, she developed a passion for poetry early in life. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. Glück's poetry is known for its precise, austere language and deep psychological insight, often exploring themes of family, love, death, and nature. Her major works include 'The Wild Iris' (1992), 'The Seven Ages' (2001), and 'Faithful and Virtuous Night' (2014). She has received numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award, and served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004. Her works have been translated into many languages and have had a profound impact on contemporary poetry. more

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“Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241)”

“According to the surgeon general, obesity today is officially an epidemic; it is arguably the most pressing public health problem we face, costing the health care system an estimated $90 billion a year. Three of every five Americans are overweight; one of every five is obese. The disease formerly known as adult-onset diabetes has had to be renamed Type II diabetes since it now occurs so frequently in children. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association predicts that a child born in 2000 has a one-in-three chance of developing diabetes. (An African American child's chances are two in five.) Because of diabetes and all the other health problems that accompany obesity, today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The problem is not limited to America: The United Nations reported that in 2000 the number of people suffering from overnutrition--a billion--had officially surpassed the number suffering from malnutrition--800 million.”

“Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted. Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes? Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.”

“I hold the bottle out into the rain and watch as the steady flow slowly fills it. When there is enough, enough that Beth can clearly see, I close the bottle and hand it to her. She raises a skeptical eyebrow, but accepts the bottle. "It's our rain Beth." Her head barely shakes to show her confusion while I rub the back of my neck and search for my courage. "I told you I loved you in this rain and when you doubt my words, I want you to look at this bottle.”