Shakespeare: Won’t You Be My Sweet Juliet?

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”

— Khaled Hosseini

"I've always liked quiet people: You never know if they're dancing in a daydream or if they're carrying the weight of the world."

- John Green (Looking for Alaska)

Some eyes touch you more than hands ever could.

“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.”

— Henry David Thoureau

Whoever first said that poetry is dead failed to provide the autopsy. If poetry is dead, what a rowdy and glorious ghost. Poetry haunts. Poetry permeates the walls we put up. Poetry startles us awake and into our own aliveness. Poetry rustles the hairs on the backs of our necks and chases us into more compassionate rooms. Though it is difficult to change a stubborn mind, poetry can change our hearts in an instant.

Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, from How Poetry Can Change Your Heart

“Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”

— Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting”

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.””

— Virginia Woolf

Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924)