Portland Vase/life Story

Famous quotes containing the words portland, vase, life and/or story:

    It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.
    —For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Forgotten and stinking they stick in the can.
    And the vase breath’s better and all, and all.
    And so for the end of our life to a man,
    Just over, just over and all.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes—learning how to close the door on it when ordinary life intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it’s time to start writing again—that I’m not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.
    Anne Tyler (b. 1941)

    I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)