Thelonious Monk Quote by Charles Simic

“Lyric poets are always corrupting the young, making them choke in self-pity and indulge in reverie. Dirty sex and direspect for authority is what…

— Charles Simic

“There’s a book called “A Dictionary of Angels.” No one has opened it in fifty years, I know, because when I did, The covers…

— Charles Simic

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

— Charles Simic

“The truth is dark under your eyelids. What are you going to do about it? The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.…

— Charles Simic

Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.

— Charles Simic

In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in…

— Charles Simic

“The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.”

— Charles Simic

Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives.

— Charles Simic

“The Something" Here come my night thoughts On crutches, Returning from studying the heavens. What they thought about Stayed the same, Stayed immense and…

— Charles Simic

There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile To be healed. There's a…

— Charles Simic

“هندوانه بودای سبز بر پیشخوان میوه فروش لبخندش را گاز میزنیم و دندانهایش را تف میکنیم :: Watermelons Green Buddhas On the fruit stand. We eat the smile And spit out the teeth.”

— Charles Simic

Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator.

— Charles Simic