Li-Young Lee Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Li-Young Lee's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Poet Li-Young Lee's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 26 quotes on this page collected since August 19, 1957! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
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  • And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain.

    Dream   Vain   Multitudes  
    Li-Young Lee (1990). “The City in which I Love You: Poems”, p.57, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

  • A bruise, blue in the muscle, you impinge upon me. As bone hugs the ache home, so I'm vexed to love you, your body the shape of returns, your hair a torso of light, your heat I must have, your opening I'd eat, each moment of that soft-finned fruit, inverted fountain in which I don't see me.

    Love You   Home   Light  
    Li-Young Lee, “The City In Which I Loved You”
  • I've been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech-if not all human speech-is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breath in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder-they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we're breathing in. The problem is, that when we're breathing in, we can't speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.

    Thinking   Oxygen   Blood  
    "The Totality of Causes". Interview with Tina Chang, www.poets.org. February 21, 2014.
  • Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

  • A door jumps out from shadows, then jumps away. This is what I've come to find: the back door, unlatched. Tooled by insular wind, it slams and slams without meaning to and without meaning.

    Doors   Wind   Shadow  
    Li-Young Lee (1990). “The City in which I Love You: Poems”, p.16, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

    Sweet   Wings   Joy  
    Li-Young Lee (1986). “Rose: Poems”, p.21, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • I am that last, that final thing, the body in a white sheet listening.

    White   Listening   Body  
    Li-Young Lee (1990). “The city in which I love you: poems”, BOA Editions Ltd.
  • A poem is like a score for the human voice.

    Voice   Score   Humans  
  • Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.

    Mean   Infinity   Wounded  
    Li-Young Lee (2009). “Behind My Eyes: Poems”, p.82, W. W. Norton & Company
  • That's what I want, that kind of recklessness where the poem is even ahead of you. It's like riding a horse that's a little too wild for you, so there's this tension between what you can do and what the horse decides it's going to do.

    Horse   Riding   Want  
    Li-Young Lee, Earl G. Ingersoll (2006). “Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee”, p.128, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

    Self   Narrative  
  • Memory revises me. Even now a letter comes from a place I don’t know, from someone with my name and postmarked years ago, while I await injunctions from the light or the dark; I wait for shapeliness limned, or dissolution. Is paradise due or narrowly missed until another thousand years? I wait in a blue hour and faraway noise of hammering, and on a page a poem begun, something about to be dispersed, something about to come into being.

    Memories   Dark   Light  
    Li-Young Lee (1990). “The City in which I Love You: Poems”, p.14, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not.

    Fate   Voice   Body  
    "Behind My Eyes: Poems". Book by Li-Young Lee, 2008.
  • Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

  • The problem with memory is that is changes whatever it touches. It is never that accurate. As a result, I end up modifying and revising my own experiences. It's myth making.

  • Some things never leave a person: scent of the hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

    Hair   Texture   Weight  
    Li-Young Lee (1986). “Rose: Poems”, p.19, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

    Want   Sentences  
    Li-Young Lee, Earl G. Ingersoll (2006). “Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee”, p.77, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • Our bodies look solid, but they arent. Were like a fountain. A fountain of water looks solid, but you can put your fingers right through it. Our bodies look like things, but theres no thingness to them.

    Water   Looks   Body  
  • The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem.

    Writing  
  • Could it be in longing we are most ourselves?

    Longing  
  • To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face.

    Li-Young Lee (1986). “Rose: Poems”, p.15, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • I don't mind suffering as long as it's really about something. I don't mind great luck, if it's about something. If it's the hollow stuff, then there's no gift, one way or the other.

    Long   Luck   Mind  
    Li-Young Lee, Earl G. Ingersoll (2006). “Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee”, p.49, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • We suffer each other to have each other a while.

    Li-Young Lee (1990). “The City in which I Love You: Poems”, p.68, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

    Li-Young Lee, Earl G. Ingersoll (2006). “Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee”, p.17, BOA Editions, Ltd.
  • In writing poetry, all of one's attention is focused on some inner voice.

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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 26 quotes from the Poet Li-Young Lee, starting from August 19, 1957! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
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