“A match as a pen
Blood on the floor as ink
The forgotten gauze cover as paper
But what should I write?
I might just manage my address.
This ink is strange; it clots.
I write you from a prison
in Greece.”
My Address, written in Military Prisons of Bogiati, 5 June 1971 – After beating.
Poetry, Vi scrivo da un carcere in Grecia (I write you from a prison in Greece) (1974)
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Alexandros Panagoulis3
Greek politician and poet 1939–1976Related quotes
Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet
What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)
Context: Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year. Both windows of the room look down on the great Governor’s Yard of Illinois. This yard is a square block, a beautiful park. Our house is on so high a hill I can always look down upon the governor. Among my very earliest memories are those of seeing old Governor Oglesby leaning on his cane, marching about, calling his children about him.
Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam
As quoted in Al-Jaami' al-Saghîr by Imam al-Suyuti, where it is declared a "weak Hadith".
Variant translations:
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.
The Islamic Review, Vol. 22 (1934), p. 105, edited by Khwajah Kamal al-Din
The ink of scholars will be weighed in the scale with the blood of martyrs.
As quoted in Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic Mystical Theology (2004) by John Renard
Sunni Hadith
Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician
"What Has Become"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)
“I am a galley slave to pen and ink.”
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer
Je suis un galérien de plume et d'encre.
Letter to Zulma Carraud (2 July 1832), translated by C. Lamb Kenney.
Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress
Source: The Funny Thing Is...