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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.

Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Phones
Afraid
Alone
Call
Friends
Might
Think
Phone
Thinking
Mad

More quotes by Theodore Roethke

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The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave.
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Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
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I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
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The self says, I am The heart says, I am less The spirit says, you are Nothing.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.
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Time marks us while we are marking time.
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A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.
Theodore Roethke
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The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
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What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?
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What's important? That which is dug out of books, or out of the guts?
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Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
Theodore Roethke
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
Theodore Roethke
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In a dark time, the eye begins to see / I meet my shadow in the deepening shade...Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
Theodore Roethke
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Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
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I came where the river Ran over stones My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.
Theodore Roethke