Barrel Life

Famous quotes containing the words barrel and/or life:

    I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch ... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order ... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
    Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen] (1885–1962)

    the sheets and towels of a life we were going to share,
    The milk-stiff bibs, the shroud, each rag to be ever
    Trampled or soiled, bled on or groped for blindly,
    Came swooning out of an enormous willow hamper
    Onto moon-marbly boards.
    James Merrill (b. 1926)