Quotes from Helen Humphreys

Love is not a good thing, I've decided. It just makes you afraid you'll lose what you love, and then, because your fear makes a space for that to happen, it does. What's the point?

Another time might be easier than this one, but there's only the time you're in, thinks Enid. And it's always going to be lacking somehow. Best to spend some of your moments here on earth noticing what else is here with you instead of concentrating solely on your own misery.

The truth is that you do forget people. When you conjure them up, long after they have gone, you can't recall the essence of them, just the outline.

I don't think any more that my life is about what has happened to me. It's about what I choose to believe. It's not what I can see, but what I think is out there. And in the end, this end, here is what I believe. The heart is a wild and fugitive creature. The heart is a dog who comes home.

It's funny to think that Anson and I were here, in this same place, together all that time ago, and now here we are again. It makes me feel good, makes me feel that perhaps everything doesn't just disappear, that some things are circling back, taking the long way, but circling back towards me.

I like being mistaken for someone useful.

I have often thought that poetry is a way to name loss, but it cannot accompany one on the journey of loss.

the poetic moment is a static one. It's watching through a window while the action happens elsewhere. And then the poet turns away from the window because the poem is done ... It cannot unflinchingly stare grief down. At some point, by necessity, or design, it must turn away.

Sometimes our passion is our ruin.

The author is at one end of the experience of writing and the reader is at the other, and the book is the contract between you.

For maybe this is how poetry can be of use. Though it can't move with us, we can move it between us, pass it among us, so it is held up by our voices, so it moves with our breath, our living breath.

I like the candor of dogs. They're always honest about what they're feeling.

This is the problem with time…It doesn't follow its own rules. It stretches or compresses at will. It's either a lingering house guest or an escape artist.

If you pretend to feel a certain way, eventually you do feel that way.

Perhaps effort doesn't matter, it isn't what ensures survival.

You can't undo actions with words.

The truth is that you do forget people. When you conjure them up, long after they have gone, you can't recall the essence of them, just the outline.

The strong don't necessarily survive, but the mean invariably do.

The thing about longing is this: It is easy to feel equal to wanting. It is rare to feel equal to having.

I suppose," says Jeremy, "what I don't like is that the moment you fix something, it starts to break down again, that an engine works against itself. By its very act of running, it weakens itself, tries to come undone. Everything is slowly worked loose by the vibrations of the moving engine." Just like us, thinks Harriet.

It's so hard to get life right, she thinks, pulling the blanket tight around her shoulders. All the small balances are impossible to strike most of the time. And then there are the larger choices.

It is light that dismantles each moment, I had thought then. Light proves it one thing or another. Darkness does not judge.

Home is the place where we've felt the most, I will tell him. And that can be anyplace. Or anyone. It doesn't matter how long you lived there. It's what you'll always want to come back to.

The thing about gardens is that everyone thinks they go on growing, that in winter they sleep and in spring they rise.