112 quotes found
“It is very difficult to win. It's not in my script.”
“Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to ...”
“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock aroun...”
“You don't sound like a scientist; you sound like a poet." Rey smiled. "Can I be both?" "But you'd rather be a poet.""Who wouldn't?" he said.”
“The life of a poet lies not merely in the finite language-dance of expression but in the nearly infinite combinations of perception and memory combined with the sensitivity to what is perceived and...”
“The Chinese poet George Wu ... recorded on his comlog: "Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become." Later, on his last disk to his lover the...”
“...when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was...this very retreat that allowed...”
“A drainless shower of light is poesy 'tis the supreme of power 'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.”
“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved the Inquisition might have let him alone.”
“In poetry you must love the words the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.”
“One of Wordsworth's Lake District neighbours remarked upon hearing of the poet's death "I suppose his son will carry on the business."”
“Poetry is not a profession it's a destiny.”
“Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.”
“Poets and painters are outside the class system or rather they constitute a special class of their own like the circus people and the gypsies.”
“The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.”
“When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.”
“There's no money in poetry but then there's no poetry in money either.”
“The essentials of poetry are rhythm dance and the human voice.”
“Colour which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.”
“A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a lit...”
