“The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct”

— Joyce Carol Oates, book Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Source: Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct" by Joyce Carol Oates?

Joyce Carol Oates89

American author 1938

Related quotes

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.
It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

“This swirl of stars,' Draconus suddenly said, 'marks the plunge of light into darkness. These stars, they are distant suns, shihing their light down upon distant, unknown worlds. Worlds, perhaps, little different from this one. Or vastly different. It hardly matters. Each star swirls its path towards the centre, and at that centre is death - the death of light, the death of time itself.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

“Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself: how could you conceive of Nothingness, you who are plenitude? Your gaze is light and transforms all into light: how could you know the half-light in my heart?”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 3, sc. 6
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“Drink: the immortal waters quench the spirit's longing.
Art thou not now, bright one, all sorrow past, in elation,
Made young with joy, grown brother-hearted with the vast,
Whither thy spirit wending flits the dim stars past
Unto the Light of Lights in burning adoration.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

“Eyes forward! Sing a paean to the light
That God gives us to net the distant stars
In eyes that once were blinded with black earth.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953)
Context: Eyes forward! Sing a paean to the light
That God gives us to net the distant stars
In eyes that once were blinded with black earth.
Man had no time for aught but toll, no space
For aught but war. Yet God, in His great love,
Has cleared our eyes and given a hint of Power.