Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency…

The act of making poetry is an act of hope.

— Natasha Trethewey

“Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.”

— Pablo Neruda

Poetry is an act of peace.

— Pablo Neruda

I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the…

— Thomas Jefferson

History: A distillation of rumor.

— Thomas Carlyle

“Once he left the Haywood out for her with a page number on a scrap of paper, and she opened the book to recipes…

— Allegra Goodman

Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action…

— Alexander von Humboldt

When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes,…

— Jonathan Swift

With impeccable timing and a fine instinct for the telling detail, Francesca Abbate evokes the plenitudes and the deprivations of human habitation, the nurturing…

— Linda Gregerson

I wrote poetry in middle school and high school and even through college. It was bad. I just don't think I'm very good at…

— Jesmyn Ward

This is an age of intellectual sauces, of essence, of distillation. We have conclusions without deductions, abridgments of history and abridgments of science without…

— Benjamin Haydon

History is the distillation of rumour.

— Thomas Carlyle

To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

— Don DeLillo

And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water,…

— William McDonough

Civilization begins with distillation

— William Faulkner