72 Richard Siken Quotes from Famous Poet and Painter

Richard Siken is a multi-talented artist known for his poetry, painting, filmmaking and work as an editor.

His writing combines everyday images with deep emotions creating something truly unique.

His book “Crush” won a Yale prize and was a finalist for several other awards.

Siken has also won various prizes and grants for his work including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Richard Siken Quotes

Besides his artistic pursuits he’s a full-time social worker living in Tucson Arizona.

Siken has written several books with “I Know Some Things” as his latest work set to release in 2024.

I have listed below some of the best quotes by Richard Siken.


Best Richard Siken Quotes

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We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven… ~ Richard Siken.

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I’m sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. ~ Richard Siken.

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I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars. ~ Richard Siken.

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I don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back. ~ Richard Siken.

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You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. ~ Richard Siken.

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I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly. ~ Richard Siken.

Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued. ~ Richard Siken.

His hands keep turning into birds, and his hands keep flying away from him. Eventually the birds must land. I prefer to blame others, it’s easier. King me. ~ Richard Siken.

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I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time. ~ Richard Siken.

I kept my mind on the moon. ~ Richard Siken.

This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish. ~ Richard Siken.

Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back. ~ Richard Siken.

They huddled closer, shoulder to shoulder, painted themselves in herds… ~ Richard Siken.

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To be a man on a hill, or all the men on all the hills, or half a man shivering in the flock of himself. ~ Richard Siken.

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we’ll never get used to it. ~ Richard Siken.

Famous Richard Siken Quotes

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back. ~ Richard Siken.

I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work. ~ Richard Siken.

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What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead. ~ Richard Siken.

O how he loves you, darling boy. Oh how, like always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night. ~ Richard Siken.

The hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not, and the hand wants to do something useful. ~ Richard Siken.

I followed myself for a long while, deep into the field. Two heads full of garbage. ~ Richard Siken.

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He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand. ~ Richard Siken.

Someone is digging your grave right now. ~ Richard Siken.

Top Richard Siken Quotes

Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it? ~ Richard Siken.

The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time. ~ Richard Siken.

If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand. ~ Richard Siken.

Tell me we’re dead and I’ll love you even more. ~ Richard Siken.

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Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else. ~ Richard Siken.

Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube? ~ Richard Siken.

Lie down on the bed, you’re all I ever wanted and worth dying for too… but I think I’d rather keep the bullet. ~ Richard Siken.

I don’t know where I end and the world begins. My best guess? Skin. It’s the only actual boundary between the body and the world, between a body and any other body. ~ Richard Siken.

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder? ~ Richard Siken.

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Yellow, yellow, gold, and ochre. We stopped. We held the field. We stood very still. ~ Richard Siken.

Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later. ~ Richard Siken.

Popular Richard Siken Quotes

Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one. ~ Richard Siken.

At first there were too many branches so he cut them and then it was winter. ~ Richard Siken.

We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much. ~ Richard Siken.

A kid under a tablecloth insists he’s a ghost. A table underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us, only pretending to be invisible. ~ Richard Siken.

Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you. ~ Richard Siken.

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it. ~ Richard Siken.

When you paint an evil thing, do you invoke it or take away its power? ~ Richard Siken.

I’m sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious. ~ Richard Siken.

The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through. ~ Richard Siken.

Ultimate Richard Siken Quotes

I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything. ~ Richard Siken.

I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies? ~ Richard Siken.

The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects, so what’s there to be faithful to? ~ Richard Siken.

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I’m bleeding, I’m not just making conversation. ~ Richard Siken.

You have to hold something still to find the other things. ~ Richard Siken.

Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly flames everywhere. ~ Richard Siken.

I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. ~ Richard Siken.

I am singing now while Rome burns. ~ Richard Siken.

Inspiring Richard Siken Quotes

You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not harmless. You are not breathing. ~ Richard Siken.

A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands. ~ Richard Siken.

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story. ~ Richard Siken.

Trees outside the window and a big band sound that makes you feel like everything’s okay, a feeling that lasts for one song maybe, the parentheses all clicking shut behind you. ~ Richard Siken.

Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero. ~ Richard Siken.

Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time. ~ Richard Siken.

Everything affects my poetry, every day something happens that changes me forever. I’m susceptible and plastic, thin-skinned and moody. ~ Richard Siken.

Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them. ~ Richard Siken.

But damn if there isn’t anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills. ~ Richard Siken.

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again. ~ Richard Siken.

Great Richard Siken Quotes

Fairy tales have rules. You are a princess or you aren’t. You are pure at heart or you aren’t. If you are pure at heart, or lucky, you might catch a break. ~ Richard Siken.

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling. ~ Richard Siken.

Land a man in a landscape and he’ll try to conquer it. Make him handsome and you’re a fascist, make him ugly and you’re saying nothing new. ~ Richard Siken.

You’re going to die in your best friend’s arms. And you play along because it’s funny, because it’s written down, you’ve memorized it, it’s all you know. I say the phrases that keep it all going, and everybody plays along. ~ Richard Siken.

There are many names in history, but none of them are ours. ~ Richard Siken.

Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in? ~ Richard Siken.

I take off my hands and I give them to you but you don’t want them, so I take them back and put them on the wrong way, the wrong wrists. ~ Richard Siken.


So these were the 72 top Richard Siken quotes and sayings.

If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Kate Spade quotes and ASAP Rocky quotes.

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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar