"I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name." -Emily Dickinson
"A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire." -Laurie Anderson
"Electricity, the peril the wind sings to in the wires on a gray day." -Janet Frame
The dead, the gentle dead—who knows?—
ReplyDeleteIn tungsten filaments abide
And on my bedside table glows
Another man’s departed bride.
And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole
Town with innumerable lights,
And Shelley’s incandescent soul
Lures the pale moths of starless nights.
Steetlamps are numbered, and maybe
Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine
(So brightly beaming through a tree
So green) is an old friend of mine.
And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,
The roar of tyrants torn in hell.
— V. Nabokov (as John Shade), Pale Fire