Epigraph

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Epigraph

• a quotation at the beginning of a poem, short
  story, book chapter, or other piece of
  literature. The epigraph introduces or refers to
  the larger themes of the piece in a way, it may
  help draw the reader's attention to these ideas,
  setting the stage.

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Flock by Billy Collins from The Trouble With
Poetry

• I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
• behind the stone building
• where the printing press is housed
• all of them squirming around
• to find a little room
• and looking so much alike
• it would be nearly impossible
• to count them,
• and there is no telling
• which one will carry the news
• that the Lord is a shepherd,
• one of the few things they already know.

It has been calculated that each copy of
theGutenberg Biblerequired the skins of 300
sheep.- from an article on printing
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The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye

• When I think how far the onion has traveledjust
  to enter my stew today. I could kneel and
  praiseall small forgotten miracles,crackly
  paper peeling on the drainboardpearly layers in
  smooth agreement,the way knife enters onionand
  onion falls apart on the chopping block,a
  history revealed.
• And I would never scold the onionfor causing
  tears.It is right that tears fallfor something
  small and forgotten.How at meal, we sit to
  eat,commenting on the texture of meat or herbal
  aromabut never on the translucence of onion,now
  limp, now divided,or its traditionally honorable
  careerFor the sake of others,disappear.

"It is believed that the onion originally came
from India. In Egypt it was an object of
worship-why I haven't been able to find out. From
Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy,
thence into all of Europe."--from BETTER LIVING
COOKBOOK
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The Secret Life of Bees

• The queen, for her part, is the unifying force
  of the community if she is removed from the
  hive, the workers very quickly sense her
  absence. After a few hours, or even less, they
  show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.
• - chapter 1

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The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

• The novel is broken into seven books, all but
  the seventh bearing the titles and epigraphs from
  books of the Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha. Within
  the sections, the story is told as a round robin,
  with the Price women contributing alternating
  first-person narrative.

Book OneGenesis Book Two The Revelation101 Book ThreeThe Judges227 Book Four Bel and the Serpent375 Book Five Exodus 449 Book Six Song of the Three Children 609
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A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

• A Raisin in the Sun was a revolutionary work for
  its time. Hansberry creates in the Younger family
  one of the first honest depictions of a black
  family on an American stage, in an age when
  predominantly black audiences simply did not
  exist. It explores not only the tension between
  white and black society but also the strain
  within the black community over how to react to
  an oppressive white community.

• What happens to a dream deferred?
• Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or
  fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it
  stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar
  over-- like a syrupy sweet?
• Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
• Or does it explode?

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INSPIRATION

• Life's a voyage that's homeward bound. Herman
  Melville
• Life is a succession of lessons which must be
  lived to be understood. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood
  up for something, sometime in your life Winston
  Churchill
• There comes a time when one must take a position
  that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular,
  but he must take it because his conscience tells
  him it is right.... Martin Luther
• Happiness does not depend on outward things, but
  on the way we see them. Leo Tolstoy
• You cannot plough a field by turning it over in
  your mind. Author Unknown
• He knows the water best who has waded through it.
  Danish Proverb
• If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
  Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about
  it. W.C. Fields