No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

“After ten standard months I was done, acknowledging the ancient aphorism to the effect that no book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.”

— Dan Simmons

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

— Oscar Wilde

A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.

— E. M. Forster

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

— Paul Valery

A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.

— Oscar Wilde

“I am a shadow. I walk the wet roads under the dim light of the pale lamps, in the darkest hour of the cold…

— Foaad Ahmad

The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.

— Philip Pullman

Another way of saying "put it in the Book" would be that each poem we write pops up in the city of poetry, where…

— Gregory Orr

“My thinking, far from being clearer than a crystal, was tortuous. I would read the same passage over and over again only to realize…

— Kay Redfield Jamison

“A book, a poem, a play — they start as fantasms but they end up as things, like a box of crackers or an…

— Arthur Miller

Sometimes you finish the poem, and that last piece clicks in place. Sometimes the poem is finished with you.

— Frederick Seidel

Most of the poems I write go through forty versions and then stay in a file on my computer. I'm not very good at…

— Nick Laird

“...a poem is only finished when the last reader has read it or listened to it.”

— Cees Nooteboom

Best to say that once a poem is finished I trust it to make its way, and I trust readers will find their way…

— Seamus Heaney

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem,…

— John Burnside