Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time. — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which,… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to go away… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
“Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock Never want for food or fire Always get their heart's desire Jingle pockets… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can't complain, the… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
“To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting,… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
Entrance and exit wounds aresilvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood. The one-armed… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love. — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
“Manticor in Arabia (The manticors of the montaines Mighte feed them on thy braines.--Skelton.) Thick and scented daisies spread Where with surface dull like… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be mine, as… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence. Though philosophers like… — Robert Graves Copy Share Image
