The Best Epigraphs of 2020

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
—Hans Christian Andersen, “The Little Mermaid”

“The clearest way that you can show endurance is by sticking with a family.”
—Anne Tyler

“I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life.”
—Sylvia Plath

“I can only make things up about things that have already happened…”
—Alison Bechdel

“Love goes on like birdsong, 
As soon as possible after a bomb.”
—Bill Callahan, “Angela”

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
—Toni Morrison

“Because even if I should speak, no one would believe me. And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that what I said was true.”
—James Baldwin

“Surely there must be in a world of manifold beautiful things something among them for me. And always, while I am still young, there is that dim light, the Future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and ofttimes there’s a treachery in it.” 
—Mary MacLane, The Story of Mary MacLane

“Could be worse. Could be raining.”
—Mel Brooks

“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
—Estele Margritte

“O, fly and never tire, 
Fly and never tire,
Fly and never tire, 
There’s a great camp-meeting in the Promised Land.”
—An African American Spiritual

“If a film needed an exotic backdrop…Chinatown could be made to represent itself or any other Chinatown in the world. Even today, it stands in for the ambiguous Asian anywhere.” 
—Bonnie Tsui

“Everybody everywhere, I think, is always talking about the same shitty thing.”
—Rachel Khong

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”

“We die with the dying: 
See, they depart, and we go with them. 
We are born with the dead: 
See, they return, and bring us with them.”
—T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” The Four Quartets

“A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he was meant to be.”
—Frank A. Clark

“When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.”
—Omar Khayyam

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.”
—Mary Oliver, “Don’t Hesitate”

“Foreigners, here it is, 
This is my homeland,
Here I was born and here live my dreams.”
—Pablo Neruda, “Return”

“Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon.”
—Ina May Gaskin