John Berryman Quotes

26 quotes in 313 categories

• We must travel in the direction of our fear.
• The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.
• Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover…
• So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will…
• Offering Dragons quarter is no good, they regrow all their parts and come on again. They have to be killed.
• Literature bores me, especially great literature
• Wishin' was dyin' but I gotta make it all this way to that bed on these feet.
• We are using our own skins for wallpaper and we cannot win.
• One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.
• Praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.
• Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
• This world is gradually becoming a place Where I do not care to be any more.
• Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.
• I didn't want to be like Yeats; I wanted to be Yeats.
• I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.
• Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn
• You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to…
• Them lady poets must not marry, pal.
• I cry. Evil dissolves, and love, like foam; that love. Prattle of children powers me home, my heart claps like the swan’s under a frenzy…
• We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.

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