The birds suffer their suffering each in a lifetime, forgetting it as they go. — Guy Davenport Bird Copy Share Image
Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
I never intended to be a teacher. I just like going to school and learning things. — Guy Davenport Education Copy Share Image
A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible. — Guy Davenport Art Copy Share Image
I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
In curved Einsteinian space we are at all times, technically, looking at the back of our own head. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“... a boar is a very special kind of animal whose bristling is a thing unto itself, and his nape, like a… — Guy Davenport Animal Copy Share Image
We will always return to the private and inviolable act of reading as our culture's way of developing an individual. — Guy Davenport Book Copy Share Image
I am not writing for scholars or fellow critics, but for people who like to read, to look at pictures, and to… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
There's nothing like being a soldier for confidence or learning your limits or enduring utter humiliation. — Guy Davenport Being Copy Share Image
Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its maker's attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding… — Guy Davenport Art Copy Share Image
Poetry and fiction have grieved for a century now over the loss of some vitality which they think they see in a… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
My view, as one who taught it, is that the whole purpose of a literary education should be to tell people that… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
The difference between the Parthenon and the World Trade Center, between a French wine glass and a German beer mug, between Bach… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“Olson's Maximus and Zukofsky's 'A' are too symbolically and verbally complex, respectively, to command large audiences especially in an age when a… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
As long as you have ideas, you can keep going. That's why writing fiction is so much fun: because you're moving people… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
Something of the previous state, however, survives every change. This is called in the language of cybernetics (which took it form the… — Guy Davenport Advantage Copy Share Image
Fiction's essential activity is to imagine how others feel, what a Saturday afternoon in an Italian town in the 2nd Century looked… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“Of the autistically interior, dreaming, reading, erotic, self-sufficient child in Balthus' painting we have practically no image at all. Balthus' children are… — Guy Davenport Children Copy Share Image
“Bonnie Jean (who thinks all philosophers are idiots) has this quarrel with Wittgenstein, who in several places says that reddish green is… — Guy Davenport Philosophy Copy Share Image
It is worthwhile adding that the power of the poem to teach not only sensibilities and the subtle movements of the spirit… — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“The poet and poetess have always had a rough time of it in the Republic. It has ever been their endemic luck… — Guy Davenport Poet Copy Share Image
“A pettos speckled with gold ajiggle with a fremitus from the heart touches me like Athena's hoolet mewing in uncertain dark. So… — Guy Davenport Athena Copy Share Image
There are many objects of desire, and therefore many desires. Some are born with us, hunger, yearning, and pride of place, and… — Guy Davenport Athlete Copy Share Image
There are many objects of desire, and therefore many desires. Some are born with us, hunger, yearning, and pride of place, and… — Guy Davenport Athlete Copy Share Image
“The unexamined life is eminently worth living, were anyone so fortunate. It would be the life of an animal, brave and alert,… — Guy Davenport Animals Copy Share Image
“I God, a very Gomorry on wheels! You lead the most exciting life I know of, and complain more about it than… — Guy Davenport Exciting life Copy Share Image
“Man was first a hunter, and an artist: his early vestiges tell us that alone. But he must always have dreamed, and… — Guy Davenport Art Copy Share Image
Originality houses many rooms, and the views from the windows are all different. — Guy Davenport Creativity Copy Share Image
“Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.” — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
I was thought to be retarded as a child, and all the evidence indicates that I was. — Guy Davenport Child Copy Share Image
Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
nothing now exists that is so valuable as whatever theoretically might replace it. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its makers attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding… — Guy Davenport Art Copy Share Image
The real use of imaginative reading is precisely to suspend one's mind in the workings of another sensibility. — Guy Davenport Copy Share Image
“How can I shake and dispel the awful reputation of being an "erudite" writer? I’m about as erudite as a traffic cop.… — Guy Davenport Erudite Copy Share Image
