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Richard Siken Quotes

Richard Siken is an American poet, painter, and filmmaker. He is the author of the collection Crush , which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2004. His second book of poems, War of the Foxes, was released from Copper Canyon Press in 2015. Wikipedia  

✵ 15. February 1967
Richard Siken photo
Richard Siken: 54 quotes8 likes

Famous Richard Siken Quotes

“Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

Richard Siken Quotes about love

“We can do anything. It’s not because
our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we
struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring
your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making
those long noodles you love so much.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.”

Richard Siken

“You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

Richard Siken Quotes about heart

“Fairy tales have rules. You are a princess or you aren’t. You are pure at heart or you aren’t. If you are pure at heart, or lucky, you might catch a break.”

Richard Siken

“we are at the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest
where a heart would fit perfectly
and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place –
well then, game over.”

Richard Siken

“We're shooting the scene where I swallow your heart and you make me
spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls
right out of my mouth.
You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

Richard Siken: Trending quotes

“We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you saybut you never come through.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

Richard Siken Quotes

“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.”

Richard Siken

“You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not
          harmless. You are not
                    breathing.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush
through me and it never made any sense, anything.”

Richard Siken

“Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars
for you? That I would take you there? The splash
of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”

Richard Siken

“Moonlight making crosses
on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“We laugh & it pits the world against us.”

Richard Siken

“Oh, the things we invent when we are scared
and want to be rescued.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like “I deserved a better life than this.”

Richard Siken

“And the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending
that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands,
these shins, these soapy flanks”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?”

Richard Siken

Source: War of the Foxes

“You wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things.
                 You wanted to be in love
                             and he happened to get in the way.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“I am singing now while Rome
burns.”

Richard Siken

“You're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it.”

Richard Siken

“A kid under a tablecloth insists he’s a ghost. A table
underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us,
only pretending to be invisible.”

Richard Siken

“We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor…
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I want to ask you.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say hello.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.”

Richard Siken

“Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.
I'm sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Let’s admit, without apology, what we do to each other.”

Richard Siken

“You can sleep now, you said. You can sleep now. You said that.
I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that.
You weren't supposed to.”

Richard Siken

Source: Crush

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”

Richard Siken

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