bridgeXngs Poetry Center

It is by spending oneself that we become rich.
-- Sarah Berhardt

I am a man, not a piano key. . .
-- Doestoevsky (paraphrased)

If you hear a voice within you saying
'You are not a painter,'
Then by all means paint
. . . and that voice will be silenced
-- Vincent Van Gogh

It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.
-- Cicero

Depression was in some ways a crisis of energy
From One Thing That I Know by Wally Lamb

One might say that science itself, and civilization and art,
are all about different orderings of the world - to contain it,
and to make it in some sense intelligible, communicable.
And bearable.
-- Oliver Sacks

When you're so used to getting hard news -
and by that I mean bad news
- then news like this is almost unbelievable.
It's like being told the cancer is gone.
Well, the cancer's gone.

From New York Times: Statement by Salman Rushdie upon hearing
that the Iranian government had dropped its death threat against him.
I learned in yeshiva years ago the question posed by the Talmud ---
Who is wealthy? And the rabbi's response: --- He who rejoices in his portion.

From The Measure of Our Days by Jerome Groopman, M.D. (p 224)

   The stream of human life is like a dream;
In the morning, it is as grass, sprouting, fresh;
In the morning, it blossoms and flourishes;
   but by evening, it is cut down and withers . . . .
Our years come to an end like a fleeting whisper.
The days of our years may total seventy;
   if we are exceptionally strong, perhaps eighty;
   but all their pride and glory is toil and falsehood,
   and, severed quickly, we fly away . . . .
So teach us to number our days that
   we may attain a heart of wisdom.

Verses from Psalm 90, a psalm of life and death.
It is recited in synagogue to begin the mournful service of yizkor,
the service of remembrance of those loved ones who are gone.

    My continuing passion, author Eudora Welty has said,
is to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people-
the veil of indifference to each other's presence,
each other's wonder, each other's human plight.

For more than half a century she has parted this curtain,
not only in her writing but also in her lesser known photographs,
taken mostly in her home state of Mississippi.

Written by Bruce Weber-Life Mag re Eudora Welty

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