“When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand.” — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express. — Marianne Moore Copy Share
Victory won't come to me unless I go to it; a grape tendril ties a knot in knots till knotted thirty times — Marianne Moore Copy Share
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint. — Marianne Moore Copy Share
“Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one ...of the main… — Marianne Moore Copy Share
Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious. — Marianne Moore Copy Share
When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful… — Marianne Moore Copy Share
I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false. — Marianne Moore Copy Share
Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible. — Marianne Moore Copy Share
In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric… — Marianne Moore Copy Share
