In America they have to know just what you are-- novelist, poet, playwright... Well, I've been all of them... I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It's not like, say, playing polo and knitting. — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
If you are an idealist, it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway. — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
“The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn’t got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It’s not… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
“There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain. I was in the car. And I was glad of it. Between one point on the map and another point on the map, there was the being alone in the car in the rain. They say you are not you except in terms of relation… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share
“No, the Boss corrected, I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. ... but I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share
[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
“Those were the ones which would turn loose their grip on the branch before long-- not in any breeze, the fibers would just relax, in the middle of the day maybe with the sunshine bright and the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you've been to the dentist or aches… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share
“Sometimes sleep gets to be a serious and complete thing. You stop going to sleep in order that you may be able to get… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
“He thought of night coming on. He thought of the loneliness of tonight, this first night in the ground. This, he thought, was the moment when the dead must first feel truly alone. This was the moment when the dead, in loneliness, feel the first stirrings of the long penance of decay. This was the moment when the dead realize… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share
I reckon I am a smart aleck, but it is just a way to pass the time. — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see. — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall… — Robert Penn Warren Copy Share Image
![“[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.” quote by Robert Penn Warren](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/857/robert-penn-warren-2118_awful_a-nd-soon-now-we-shall-go-out-of-the-hou_158285.jpg)
