“But since you have suffered with me, you will forgive me both for what I did, and what I do now, touching you with unholy hands – at once your cruellest enemy and your dearest lover.”

Euripides, The Bacchae

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A defence of Poetry’

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

To the dull and angry world let's prove There's a Religion in our love

 Katherine Phillips 

Nobody told me that I’d actually have to do work at university. I thought I’d just wear cute outfits, drink coffee, nap in the library and lounge under trees reading poetry...