One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
“[Marianne Moore's definition of genuine poetry] -- Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either how it will go. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
[On her use of quotations:] When a thing has been said so well that it could not be said better, why paraphrase… — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
A man is a writer if all his words are strung in definite sentence sounds. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it. — 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 Image
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 Image
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
“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 Image
Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
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 Image
I believe verbal felicity is the fruit of ardor, of diligence, and of refusing to be false. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image
Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible. — Marianne Moore Copy Share Image