Poet Quotes · Page 155

[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty…

— Judith Viorst

“Don't breathe to survive; dance and feel alive.”

— Shah Asad Rizvi

I grow very impatient with prose writers who don't pay attention to the cadence of the sentence. If you start as a…

— Alison Hawthorne Deming

My advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the…

— e. e. cummings

I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of…

— Audre Lorde

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions,…

— Susan Sontag

“Let it shine, the light in you. Oh, and that's delighting me! Various colors shining through. Elated, it fills my soul with…

— Ana Claudia Antunes

…only a poet could frame a language that could frame a world.

— Jeanette Winterson

I may as well tell you, here and now, that if you are going about the place thinking things pretty, you will…

— P. G. Wodehouse

I've long believed that anybody who is in the act of remembering childhood is a poet, because you're thinking back on times…

— Guy Maddin

I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger…

— Rumi

Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He was a poet -oh all men are when they're in love.

— Eric Gamalinda

“If you opened the dictionary and searched for the meaning of a Goddess, you would find the reflection of a dancing lady.”

— Shah Asad Rizvi

Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.

— Jonathan Swift

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom…

— Norman MacCaig

A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this…

— Aristotle

I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new…

— James Laughlin

I think Lindsay Kemp really introduced me to the work of Jean Genet, and through that, I kind of kept re-educating myself…

— David Bowie

Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill for inspiration/and then sing about the grief.

— Bono

[I have] my own view about [Bob] Dylan's Nobel prize. Which is, I'm firmly in the Nay camp. I do think the…

— David Bennun

When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the…

— Criss Jami

When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life.

— John Drinkwater

I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be…

— William Cowper

Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.

— Libba Bray