All Philip Levine Quotes
- I write what's given me to write. Given
- I'm afraid we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from others. Afraid
- I'm saying look, here they come, pay attention. Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary, commonplace, into what it is, a moment in time, an… Appears
- I'm seventy-one now, so it's hard to imagine a dramatic change. Change
- If that voice that you created that is most alive in the poem isn't carried throughout the whole poem, then I destroy where it's not… Alive
- It's ironic that while I was a worker in Detroit, which I left when I was twenty six, my sense was that the thing that's… Crummy
- Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy.… Advice
- No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you. Fraud
- Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary,… Extraordinary