“I love them for finding what I can't find, and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all.”

— Denise Levertov

O Taste and See : New Poems (1964), The Secret

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Denise Levertov 49

Poet 1923–1997

Related quotes

“I love them
for finding what
I can't find, and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

O Taste and See : New Poems (1964), The Secret
Context: I love them
for finding what
I can't find, and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

“I know you: You’ll come find me again, you’ll come rescue me no matter what happens. You’ll come for me, and I’ll discover you all over again. I love you. I love you without the memories. I love you right now.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

“Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry. I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

O Taste and See : New Poems (1964), The Secret
Source: Poems, 1960-1967

“Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about, he thought of them as working drawings. I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there. And then when you come to use line, if you know what you're looking at, it's much easier to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution to what you want to depict.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

From a series of interviews with Marco Livingstone (April 22 - May 7, 1980 and July 6 - 7, 1980) quoted in Livingstone's David Hockney (1981), p. 185
1980s

“I will love you for ever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again…”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: The Amber Spyglass

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) French clergyman, noble and statesman

Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
As quoted in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896) by Jehiel K̀eeler Hoyt, p. 763
Édouard Fournier, in L'Espirit dans l'Historie (1867), 3rd edition, Ch. 51, p. 260, disputes the traditional attribution, and suggests various agents of Richelieu might have been the actual author.
David Hackett Fischer, in Champlain's Dream (2009), Simon & Schuster, p. 704, n. 14, says it's a paraphrase of Quintilian and there is no source closer to Richelieu than Francoise Bertaut's Memoires pour servir à l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche.
Disputed