Author: Michelle Gagnon

Cites

• Cleopatra Mathis (1)
  • IN: Don't Let Go (2014) Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Heaven got sweeter, its paperweight curve star-crazy at its purple center. She’d found a god, a weapon in the works. Something I hadn’t noticed in the field fought out of the layers and took her. I tore away the land’s every color, withered the smallest grasses. Every heartbeat went blank, I dismantled the ticking. They only say what I took, not what I gave: roots and strong light, glory in the single shoot, green currency of the just-born. From the irredeemable, the buried—this is how a self gets made. Remember, that darkness contained the seed sealed in the swollen red globe. Hell had to pay
    FROM: After Persephone, (2001), Poem, US
• William Ernest Henley (1)
  • IN: The Gatekeeper (2009) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
    FROM: Invictus (Unconquered), (1888), Poem, UK
• Edna Millay (1)
  • IN: Don't Look Now (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Be to her, Persephone, All the things I might not be: Take her head upon your knee. She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free, She that had no need of me, Is a little lonely child Lost in Hell, -- Persephone, Take her head upon your knee: Say to her, "my dear, my dear, It is not so dreadful here."
    FROM: Prayer to Persephone, (1921), Poem, US
• Rita Dove (1)
  • IN: Don’t Turn Around (2012) Fiction, Young Adult, American
    EPIGRAPH: One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled, stooped to pull harder— when, sprung out of the earth on his glittering terrible carriage, he claimed his due. It is finished. No one heard her. No one! She had strayed from the herd.(Remember: go straight to school. This is important, stop fooling around! Don’t answer to strangers. Stick with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.) This is how easily the pit opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.
    FROM: Persephone, (1996), Poem, US