I wouldn't be very happy if a poet read what I had written…

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.

— Abraham Lincoln

I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that…

— Gerald Stern

“Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent- a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet is insufferable.”

— The Hakawati Rabih Alameddine

“it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice…

— Mary Karr

Happy the poet who with ease can steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. [Lat., Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une…

— Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in…

— Edward Hirsch

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them,…

— Robert Graves

You can't read to yourself. It's your inner ear that hears a poem. If you hear a poet read his own work, it becomes…

— Derek Walcott

A poet is not a public figure. A poet should be read and not seen.

— Cecil Day-Lewis

There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that ,…

— W. H. Auden

How far we are going to read a poet when we can read about a poet is a problem to lay before biographers.

— Virginia Woolf

“Show me what you've written," I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it.”

— Osamu Dazai

“She's read every word I've written," he said. "That's the truest way to know someone's heart.”

— adam johnson

“Indeed, all books, each and every book ever written, could be said to be offered to the reader as a form of self-help.”

— Mohsin Hamid

I can't tell you how many times someone has written me and said, 'I became a doctor because of you' or 'I became a…

— Rudy Ruettiger