Able Quote by Bei Dao

Once your poems are completed, you send them into the world. You don't write for a coterie of other writers - you write for…

— Edward Hirsch

Being a poet in the States is quite different from being one in China, because in the States poetry depends on the universities for…

— Bei Dao

It is no use thinking that writing of poems - the actual writing - can accommodate itself to a social setting, even the most…

— Mary Oliver

I write from the various experiences I live. Not every poem comes from my personal experience, though. It could be something that a friend…

— Rupi Kaur

As far as poetry, I don't know if I've ever written any. I've read a lot. I just write and it comes out in…

— Henry Rollins

I write for myself, and perhaps for half a dozen friends. And that should be enough. And that might improve the quality of my…

— Jorge Luis Borges

I don't think poetry has a readership anywhere, really, that's that big.

— Derek Walcott

I personally believe the role of poets as poets (which is something different from our obligations as citizens, community members, humans) is to write…

— Matthew Zapruder

It's difficult to put your own bare ass out on the limb every time you sit down to write a poem. But that's really…

— Sam Hamill

It is always better to write for the whole of society than for the poetry-reading public.

— Tony Harrison

I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

— Michael Helm

“Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing…

— Ted Kooser