A Quote by Edmund Gosse

In mature years I have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent upon the company of friends for the very pulse of moral life. To be marooned, to be shut up in a solitary cell, to inhabit a lighthouse, or to camp alone in a forest, these have always seemed to me afflictions too heavy to be borne, even in imagination. A state in which conversation exists not, is for me an air too empty of oxygen for my lungs to breathe it.
To write poetry is to be very alone, but you always have the company of your influences. But you also have the company of the form itself, which has a kind of consciousness. I mean, the sonnet will simply tell you, that's too many syllables or that's too many lines or that's the wrong place. So, instead of being alone, you're in dialogue with the form.
I remember, as a boy of 17 years of age, this was a fascinating thing for me: how we human beings breathe out carbon dioxide into the air, the leaves of plants pick this carbon dioxide up, and the plant gives off oxygen, which we can breathe in and keep our life going.
I'm not classically pretty; I've always been too heavy; I've had thyroid disease and it's very hard for me to lose weight - but I've always had men pursue me. I've always had that 'it' thing. God knows why. Maybe it's pheromones, I don't know.
A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.
Breathe in, breath out. Oxygen is carcinogenic and likely puts a limit on our life span. It would be unwise though, to try to extend life by not breathing at all. Which of us doesn't do it? Either we loll in anaerobic stupor, too afraid to fill our lungs with risky beauty, or we roll out fire like dragons, destroying the world we love. I try not to burn up my world with rage. It is so hard.
I have way too many commitments. I get pulled in too many directions and I never seem to be able to satisfy anybody. People get turned on by knowing a celebrity, even my friends and family. They feel that there's something exciting about me, but in reality there's no substance to it. People in airports just hold on to me expecting something and it seems that I always come up empty. It's frustrating because I'm trying to please everybody, and ya just can't do that ... at least I can't.
There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.
Air you breathe is bad for your lungs so you've got to careful and don't overdue any bad air. Too much pot, too much anything is not good. Your lung is a piece of flesh, a piece of bone. You can injure it.
Over the last 10 years, there have been so many incredible albums created in bedrooms by people who never would've gotten an album deal. People keep thinking of professional music studios like they've always been this way for hundreds of years, but they're very much a child of the 70s. Even the interior is very 70s. Everything's brown and it's wood - somebody told me the wood panels are all by the same company. We're always mourning things that have died. It's a bit much sometimes. These studios have no fresh air, and there's this unwritten rule that they don't have windows, either.
My mom always let me watch movies that were probably slightly too mature for my age, but she wanted me to see different stories. We grew up with quite a hard life, so she wasn't afraid to show me that in movies.
People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature, or in man even.
Holmes has become the dark side of the moon for me. He is moody and solitary and underneath I am really sociable and gregarious. It has all got too dangerous.
There are too many heavy songs out nowadays. music has been getting too heavy, almost to the state of unbearable.
I don't experience much loneliness, oddly. Sometimes I have thought I was lonely and it turned out I was in reality wanting a snack, just like sometimes I have thought I was mad and it turned out I was actually wearing too many sweaters. I've always been very content in the company of my own thoughts, and I prefer to spend much of my time alone. But I do like conversation - for the exercise, for the spark, for the let's-see-where-it-takes-us, for being able to dip into communal creativity when you're tired of your own air.
I have always gone to nature, since I was a kid. I was brought up in the woods, I did not have lots of friends, so I spent lot of time alone. My mother always loved to live in the forest; she loved gardens, birds and nature and taught me a deep respect for that. She taught me about growing food and vegetables and to take care of animals. They also have feelings. So nature was always something sacred for me, the place I can go, meditate and pray. It's like a church in the nature for me.
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