Pelicans

Quote: Rodin

"Each thing is merely the limit of the flame to which it owes its existence."

From chapter 4 ('Sexualized Fire') in The Psychoanalysis of Fire by Gaston Bachelard

Quote: Paul Eluard

"I must not look on reality as being like myself"

Point Lobos

Indian Beach

'Winter Night' by Charles Simic

The church is an iceberg.

It's the wind.  It must be blowing
   tonight
Out of those galactic orchards,
Their Copernican pits and stones.

The monster created by the mad
   Dr. Frankenstein
Sailed for the New World,
And ended up some place like
   New Hampshire. 

Actually, it's just a local drunk,
Knocking with a snow shovel,
Wanting to go in and warm
   himself.

An iceberg, the book says, is a
   large drifting
Piece of ice, broken off a glacier.

Excerpt from Jeanette Winterson's memoir 'Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?'

" ... when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy.  A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is.  That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it is.  It isn't a hiding place.  It is a finding place."

Quote: Virginia Woolf

"Here is life given us each alike, and we must do our best with it.  Our hand in the sword hilt - and an unuttered, fervent vow!"

from the last entry in her diary for 1897.  She was 15 years old.