Franz Wright

What’s beautiful? How do you define beauty? Best way I ever saw was Sappho—“Some people say, like, a herd of black horses running across the plain. Some say a flotilla of warships heading out from port are beautiful. I say whatever one loves is beautiful.” Whatever you love, that’s what’s beautiful. You have certain special and private places, and ideal places, you keep inside you, memories of times when, the way you’re constantly in childhood, having experienced the feeling like you’re just about to see through to the way things really should be. It’s real evident right away that they’re not. But you can still see how they should be, and you still feel it’s unfair that they’re not. That may be part of it. I don’t think it’s just puberty. That thing where that light goes out of children’s faces when they’re like eleven or something—it’s the saddest thing in the world. That may be part of it.