Poets Quotes · Page 29

“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really…

— Oscar Wilde

Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got…

— William Empson

Powell belongs, in fact to the first generation of American poets who may have grown up without even a vestigial connection to…

— Stephen Burt

Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is…

— Elizabeth Janeway

Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and…

— William C. Brown

“most of these American poets pushing and hustling their talents playing at greatness. poet (?): that word needs re- defining. when I…

— Charles Bukowski

I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as…

— Ian Mcewan

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this:…

— Carol Ann Duffy

“I had begun to suspect, however, that there is a poet—or a kind of poet—buried in every human being like Ariel in…

— James Dickey

Maybe poets express more directly a sense of sympathy for other human beings. Painting is a little bit more of a retreat…

— Francesco Clemente

He was certainly in a confused state. I used to go and visit him in Callan Park. They were really - to…

— Robert Adamson

Someone in Ireland asked me how many Republican poets there were in the U.S., and I thought maybe two. Maybe there are…

— Robert Hass

“i see poets riding the red winds unchecked by the borders of time, wandering with light feet over the land mines and…

— Peter Standish Evans

New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very…

— Samuel Johnson

Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more…

— T. S. Eliot

Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And…

— Alexander Pope

“To be a true poet is to become God. I tried to explain this to my friends on Heaven's Gate. 'Piss, shit,'…

— Dan Simmons

“Just look what happens to poets," I used to tell my honors class on the first day of school. "Half the time…

— Steve Yarbrough

I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often.…

— Sam Hamill

“Good or bad, positive or negative, there is no comment more insulting to a poet than one displaying that you have not…

— Jasper Sole

Long before I was a writer, when I was just a haphazard reader and a dreamer of stories, I learnt about an…

— Andrew O'Hagan

That's what artists do, that's what poets do - we all do it. We start with something, and sometimes we destroy everything…

— Patti Smith

Yes, you can feel very alone as a poet and you sometimes think, is it worth it? Is it worth carrying on?…

— Roger McGough

I'm about fifty years behind as far as my preferences go and I must say that the poets who excite me most…

— Sylvia Plath

“The Old Poets Of China Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe…

— Mary Oliver