Jane Hirshfield Quotes

The best secrets are the most twisted

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew.

The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

There are secrets within secrets, though--always.

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

There are secrets everywhere. I think everyone's parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them.

Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.

Behind us: the unknown. Before us: the secret.

Art like life is an open secret.

When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart.

Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.

Photography is all about secrets... The secrets we all have and will never tell.

The magical story is not a microscope but a mirror, not a drop of water but a well. It is not simply one thing or two, but a multitude. It is at once both lucid and opaque, it accepts both dark and light, speaks to youth and old age.

We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity... but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

The world is incomprehensible. We won't ever understand it; we won't ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.

I've learned a lot as a writer about poetry.

Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

That, my dear, is what makes a character interesting, their secrets.

The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.

There are some things that defy explanation- kind of like. . . you know, you.

The sea is an idiom I cannot decipher.

That there is a secret itself is a secret.

Not knowing everything is all that makes it OK, sometimes.