"All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millenia, they ended up developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society. We try to see reality as just a physical thing and that it does not go beyond that. But what we have to do, women included, is to develop more of this feminine side, meaning intuition, meaning being open to a new perception of reality."
- Paulo Coelho

It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be before you turn 18 or 33 or 59. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date. It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.
- David Levithan

"Our imagination is larger than the world around us; we go beyond our limits. This used to be called 'witchcraft,' but fortunately things have changed, otherwise we would both already have been burned at the stake. When they stopped burning women, science found an explanation for our behaviour, normally referred to as 'female hysteria.' We don't get burned anymore, but it does cause problems...But don't worry, eventually they'll call it 'wisdom.'"
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

"I want everything. I want savagery and tenderness. I want to upset the neighbors and placate them too. I don't want a woman in my bed, I want men, real men, like you, for example. Whether they love me or are merely using me, it doesn't matter. My love is greater than that. I want to love freely, and I want to allow the people around me to do the same."
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

Give us this day our daily clock
I started to chant...
and give us our daily blood
and our daily patience and some extra patience
until we cannot stand to live any longer.
- Thieves (Billy Collins)

What has she found that she doesn't
keep losing, her torso
a green-burning torch?
- Matisse's Dance (Natalie Safir)

"You find in Paganism the strangest mixture of people. You find revolutionaries and radicals, You find former army intelligence types, maybe even active CIA types. This is because they are all action oriented. They crave something new. They crave dignity and adventure. They want to know what's just over the next physical or intellectual or emotional hill. All these people work together, thoroughly enjoy each other's company, and ignore each other's politics."
- Ed Fitch

"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
- Loving in truth (Sir Philip Sidney)

Most friendship is feigning, most loving is folly.
- Blow, blow, thou winter wind (Shakespeare)

xxxx

On the edge of a pasture in a confusion of stones,
obscured by the long grass and floramour,
the footprint of horror cloven and drawn.
She had a beautiful name: freedom.
Pretty little chop. Unmarketable, light
the bleating of new life.

He loved her mouth, tiny feet dressed in pleats.
Hearing her cry, he picked her up by the stem
of her throat in his thich arms slick with dew.
And he, a governed soul, broad-shouldered
with eyes like Blake, lamented who bred thee, nursed
thee on mead and flowers, as he ripped her apart.
- Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us (Patti Smith)

You, I write beloved black lace Ophelia
extravagantly pierced dread pale moon.
Negatives inflame your immutable eye,
hands face feather soaked in love.

Cast your pearls pen the ink fat night.
Comb ashes from the garden asylum,
the white cliff of ambition shedding.
Shoot baby shoot, powers can alter.
Her human cathedral hung with tassels
of hair threaded with golden string.
And she sang as she slid dangerously alive
through long arms of trailing algae...

You are my summer knight she whispered.

The spokes of the wheel bear witness.
A barren heart is a heart that does not choose.
Beloved, come down fluid like naked convinced
a heart has stopped floating orchid child.

Horns of angel turned in virulent dist,
bring to feel found shelter in fire.
The first roar dry and blood brown
crisscrossing the kingdom of a wrist.
- She Lay in the Stream Dreaming of August Sander (Patti Smith)

What is the heart but a small hand
of agonies? What is the immobile
stag, but a blessing disguised
within the pages of a book?
- To His Daughter (Patti Smith)

"It is necessary to learn the ways of the world and the wiles of men, so you may resist them."
- Ophelia (Lisa Klein)

"But I cannot believe that men and women would do such wiched things in the name of love," I said.
"Oh, but they do, and they will," she replied...
- Ophelia (Lisa Klein)

"No more will I put my trust in princes."
- Ophelia (Lisa Klein)

By the end of my story I had a clearer view of my situation: a life that I had chosen in the belief that love conquers all. And it isn't true. Sometimes love carries us into the abyss, taking with us- to make matters worse- the people we love.
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

"A curse on this place!" said the voice. "A curse on all those who never listened to the words of Christ and who have transformed his message into a stone building. For Christ said: 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest...' Today I've learned that the Church has changed those words to read: 'Come unto me all ye who follow our rues, and let the heavy laden go hang!'"
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

"We're surrounded by Universal Desire. It's not happiness, it's desire. And desires are never satisfied, because once they are, they cease to be desires."
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

"It doesn't matter. They'll get lost, and that's the best way to discover interesting places. Try to fill your life again with a little fantasy; above our heads is a sky about which the whole of humanity- after thousands of years spent observing it- has given various apparently reasonable explanations. Forget everything you've ever learned about the stars, and they'll once more be transformed into angels, or into children, or into whatever you want to believe at the moment. It won't make you more stupid- after all, it's only a game- but it could enrich your life."
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

It doesn't surprise me in the least that more and more people are becoming interested in pagan traditions. Why? Because God the Father is associated with the rigor and discipline of worship, whereas the Mother Goddess shows the importance of love above and beyond all the usual prohibitions and taboos.
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

According to pagan tradition, nature worship is more important than reverence for sacred books. The Goddess is in everything and everything is part of the Goddess. The world is merely an expression of her goodness. There are many philosophical systems- such as Taoism and Buddhism- that make no distinction between creator and creature. People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

"The origins of the theater are sacred," I went on. "It began in Greece with hymns to Dionysus, the god of wine, rebirth, and fertility. But it's believed that even from very remote times, people performed a ritual in which they would pretend to be someone else as a way of communing with the sacred."
- The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho)

xxx

war goddess,
cheek to my breast,
emotions undressed,
eyes, molasses pools,
searching mine,
although you came ready-made,
know that
i, your servant,
will pull the thread
from the very last horizon
quilting elegant armor
to gird you with its magic.
i will melt and mold stars,
hammer for hours on end
your shield.
with these mouths of mine,
i, ju woman,
will break bread of stone,
swallow the moon full,
drink a river rushing,
and sop blood
with a biscuit
for you.
prayerfully,
with mortal arms,
feeble hands,
and wilting fingers,
i will reach beyond the bowels
of time and life itself
to bring back your sword.
war goddess, earth daughter,
even as an old, old woman,
i shall remain pregnant with passion and laughter
surrounded by striplings
showering seeds
upon my twirling, whirling garden.
i shall dance along the beach's edge
laughing,
gathering shells and bones,
casting my psalms upon the waters.
i shall dance along the beach's edge
laughing,
shouting down a purple dawn,
chanting the victory of your return.
- Ajeemah's Psalm (Tamara J. Madison)

Years ago. The man I love just left me,
and I'm nursing both grudge and grief.
Beside me, a bucket of oysters.
A man leans over, a knife
in one hand, a beer in the other,
so even before he sets his bottle down
I know what will happen. The blade slips
out of the oyster into his palm.
Blood. And he too stunned
to try to stop it.
That's the way it goes, I tell myself.
First you open. Then you bleed.
- Oysters (Melody Lacina)

Do you believe there's such a thing as forgetting?
- Once Removed (M. J. Bender)

If I could, darling, I'd weave you a basket for all the poison.
- Cancion/Cradleboard (Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran)

The only word for us is Pagans- the lovers of trees, the mad dancers in moonlit groves, the reverers of our beloved Earth for the mere face of her immediate intoxicating existence.
- Tom Williams

xxxx

Burn Everything Except the Shakespeare

Words pay no debts.
- Troilus and Cressida

To fear the worst oft cures the worse.
- Troilus and Cressida

"I have been worth the whistling."
"You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face."
- King Lear

You speak like a green girl.
- Hamlet

As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.
- Henry IV

"So young and so undtender?"
"So young, my lord, and true."
- King Lear

Young men's love then lies
Not truly in their hearts but in their eyes.
- Romeo and Juliet

For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence
Without the beauty of a woman's face?
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkles till the right Promethian fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
- Love's Labour's Lost

"Nay, good, be patient."
"When the sea is."
- The Tempest

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves..."
- Julius Caesar

Rome is but a wilderness of tigers.
- Titus Andronicus

Commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways."
- Henry IV

Have patience and endure.
- Much Ado About Nothing

This is very Midsummer madness.
- Twelfth Night

A fool doth think he is wise, but the wise-
Man knows himself to be a fool.
- As You Like It

I would eat his heart in the market-place!
- Much Ado About Nothing

It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in't.
- Winter's Tale

I have no other but a woman's reason:
I think he so, because I think him so.
- Two Gentlemen of Verona

Fight till the last gasp.
- Henry VI

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past...
- Sonnet XXX

Who seeks and will not take, when once 'tis offered,
Shall never find it more.
- Antony and Cleopatra

"In night," quoth she, "desire sees best of all."
- Venus and Adonis

Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon.
- Henry IV

Thou, Nature, art my goddess.
- King Lear

There's Rosemary; that's for remembrance.
I pray you, love, remember...
- Hamlet

As mad as a March Hare.
- Two Noble Kinsmen

Oh while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!
- Henry IV

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
- Much Ado About Nothing

You have witchcraft in your lips.
- Henry V

My mistress with a monster is in love.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream

She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
- Twelfth Night

In silent wonder of still-gazing eyes.
- Lucrece

Thou sodden-witted lord, thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.
- Troilus and Cressida

I do desire we may be better strangers.
- As You Like It

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Man were deceivers ever.
- Much Ado About Nothing

xxx

"There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember. You know how to avoid meeting a bear on the track. You know the winter fear when you hear the wolves gathering. But you can remain seated for hours in the tree-tops to away morning. You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or failing that, invent."
- Les Guerilleres (Monique Wittig)

"There was this Quaker meeting at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center outside of Philadelphia. We used to have meetings every morning and lots of weighty Quakers came to these meetings. And I sat in the back row, morning after morning, listening to all these messages coming through about 'the fatherhood of God' and 'the brotherhood of man' and 'he' and 'him.' And one morning, after about thirty minutes, that feeling inside of me that I have always learned to trust as guidance just swelled and swelled until I was shaking, a feeling that I should say something. And I felt if I didn't say it, I would be betraying something I had learned to trust. All I said was, 'Mother. Sister. Daughter.' And it fell likea rock through this still pool of fatherhood and brotherhood. But then, everyone in the stillness could reflect on what that might mean. I had declared myself. I had declared myself as being- what shall I say?- on the fringe. My feminism was considered in poor taste. But several women came up to me afterwards and hugged me, and that meant a lot."
- Jean Mountaingrove

"Let's talk about magick. Because music, at its best, is a kind of magick that lifts you up and takes you somwhere else. I want my music to sound like throwing yourself out of a tree, or off a tall building, or as if you're being sucked down into the ocean and you can't breathe; it's something overwhelming and all-encompassing that fills you up, and you're either going to explode with it, or you're just going to disappear."
- Florence Welch

If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!"
- John Waters

One day, you realize that there are some people you'll never see again. At least, not in the same way.
- The Age At Which It Happens (http://iwrotethisforyou.me)

In wildness is the preservation of the world.
- Thoreau

xxx