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Tag: quotation

February 12, 2026

The First Time Percy Came Back

The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.
He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
“Percy,” I cried out, and reached to him—
              those white curls—
but he was unreachable. As music
is present yet you can’t touch it.
“Yes, it’s all different,” he said.
“You’re going to be very surprised.”
But I wasn’t thinking of that. I only
wanted to hold him. “Listen,” he said,
“I miss that too.
And now you’ll be telling stories
              of my coming back
and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,
but they’ll be real.”
And then, as he used to, he said, “Let’s go!”
And we walked down the beach together.

—Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings (2012)

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July 11, 2014

Halley: I wanted to give you this letter back.

Cliff: (Sighs.) It’s my one love letter.

Halley: It’s beautiful. I’m just — the wrong person.

Cliff: It’s probably just as well… I plagiarized most of it from James Joyce. You probably wondered, why all the references to Dublin.

(Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen, 1989)

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June 20, 2014

“I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit hole; and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a sorrowful tone, “at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.”

“But then,” thought Alice, “shall I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman—but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!”

“Oh, you foolish Alice!” she answered herself. “How can you learn lessons in here? Why, there’s hardly room for you, and no room at all for any lesson books!”

And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether….

              —Alice in Wonderland (Chapter IV, “The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill”)

(Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, Illustrated Junior Library Edition)

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