“Longing for paradise crowded the beliefs of reasonable people. / Reasonable people longing for experimentation.” – Bob Sykora, “Various American Utopias, Abridged Version”

“Poetry is what is unsayable. To blurt out what is unsayable is to ignore this fundamental premise.” – Lee Seong-bok, ‘Indeterminate Inflorescence: lectures on poetry’

“How white everything was, from / neighbors to church, to storybooks— / like on cloudy days when / the sky is all glare.” – Han VanderHart, “Partial List of Hauntings”

“Let’s read some poetry!” – Fergie, probably, if AWP had a national anthem portion

“Look, Annie, look—there is no space for anything but dreaming.” – Aimee Bender, “The Rememberer”

“We’ll write a riff, and it’s a sick riff, so it’s guaranteed that the song will be at least interesting to some extent, because you have the sick riff.” – Yvette Young, interviewed

“They could put it on his gravestone: he tried to be of use” – Lydia Millet, ‘Dinosaurs’

“Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me…” – Jorge Luis Borges

“This is hardly science, but only a fairy tale, a critic wrote, shortly after the book on the earth’s systemic interconnectedness…” – Angela Woodward, ‘Natural Wonders’

“I fell in love with a robber and he took me on his rounds.” – Aimee Bender, “The Ring”