Quotation Saturday!

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. ~~Edgar Allan Poe

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

~~W. H. Auden

Flannery O’Connor on symbols in fiction …
"Now the word symbol scares a good many people off, just as the word art does. They seem to feel that a symbol is some mysterious thing put in aribitrarily by the writer to frighten the common reader — sort of a literary Masonic grip that is only for the initiated …

"I think that for the fiction writer himself, symbols are something he uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that these are details that, while having their essential place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the surface, increasing the story in every direction.

"I think that the way to read a book is always to see what happens, but in a good novel, more always happens than we are able to take in at once, more happens than meets the eye. The mind is led on by what it sees into the greater depths that the book’s symbols naturally suggest. This is what is meant when critics say that a novel operates on several levels. The truer the symbol, the deeper it leads you, the more meaning it opens up."
~~Flannery O’Connor in "The Nature and Aim of Fiction" in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

If one keeps on loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste ones love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger. Sometimes it is well to go into the world and converse with people, and at times one is obliged to do so, but he who would prefer to be quietly alone with his work, and who wants but very few friends, will go safest through the world and among people. And even in the most refined circles and with the best surroundings and circumstances, one must keep something of the original character of an anchorite, for otherwise one has no root in oneself; one must never let the fire go out in one’s soul, but keep it burning. And whoever chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure, and will always clearly hear the voice of his conscience; he who hears and obeys that voice, which is the best gift of God, finds at last a friend in it, and is never alone.

~~Vincent Van Gogh, from Dear Theo

May you find the light around ever cloud; may you hear music in every sound. For within a heartbeat, a story can be found. ~~ Joni Zipp