The June Scrapbook—A Living Document
Quotes I've encountered in June that I'm loving—continually updated and curated.
By Grace Smith
Published June 14, 2025
Between books I've read this year and books I haven't, here are some of the quotes I've encountered lately that I either loved in the moment or that have been lingering with me.
“There is more and more I tell no one, strangers nor loves. This slips into the heart without hurry, as if it had never been. And yet, among the trees, something has changed. Something looks back from the trees, and knows me for who I am. — Jane Hirshfield”
“My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light! — Edna St. Vincent Millay”
“To the lover, everything signifies. — Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse.”
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“People do not see you, / They invent you and accuse you. — Hélène Cixous”
“It's always so easy to say what everyone should have done when you know what they actually did didn't work. — Fredrik Backman, Us Against Them.”
“People will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened. — Fredrik Backman, Us Against You.”
“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined. — Toni Morrison, Beloved.”
“Practice like it means everything in the world to you. Perform like you don't give a damn. — Jascha Heifetz”
“You must find the courage to prioritize your art.”
“Somewhere you are living alone and courageous in a rough reality. May the year to come maintain and strengthen you in it. — Rainer Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.”
“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written. — Robert Hass.”
“The tourist craves predictability and convenience; the traveler understands that, like a grace note in music, anxiety is a small but important part of travel, and that being removed from one's regular routine is precisely the point of getting away. — Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience.”
“There is no tragedy in starting again, so long as you start again. — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.”
“Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead-calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls. — Anne Carson, On Hedonism.”
“How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled — Mary Oliver, Thirst: Poems.”
“God is feeding me, and what I'm praying for is an appetite. — Flannery O'Connor, A Prayer Journal.”
“I am half-afraid to hope for what I long for. — Emily Dickinson.”
“Where I create, there I am true. — Rainer Marie Rilke.”
Screenshot credit from Poetry Foundation.
“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing. — Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: The Letters of Flannery O'Connor.”
“I believed, before I sold my first book, that publication would be instantly and automatically gratifying...The waiting and the fantasies, both happy and grim, wear you down. — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird.”
“There's a reason that rearview mirrors are small and windshields are big. — Lyla Sage, Wild and Wrangled.”
“I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. — Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”
“It's funny. Now that the book has had some success or done well, all my old professors are like 'We knew you would do great!' And I'm like 'No, you thought I was weird but that's okay.' — Chloé Cooper Jones, interviewed in Take It from Me.”
“Sam learned early on that people were rarely good, but they were also rarely bad. Instead, they were neither wholly committed to either side, which, in her eyes, was much worse. — Xan Kaur, When Devils Sing.”
Honestly, it's been nice lately to see the writers I've drifted towards on a line-level. Lately, a lot of Rilke and Anne Carson and Mary Oliver (always givens) and Steinbeck, but also Flannery O'Connor and Camus and some others I wouldn't necessarily have expected.
