Doe Quote by William Faulkner

So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by…

— Nicholson Baker

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which…

— Jesmyn Ward

I have poetic failures all the time. Many failed poems. I try not to publish those, though some have slipped into each book, since…

— Matthea Harvey

I'm not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.

— Billy Squier

I believe in creative failing - to contine to write poems that fail and fail and fail until a day comes when you've got…

— Ray Bradbury

Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.

— Alice Fulton

If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing.

— Ray Bradbury

There's always some reason not to be writing and I regret the times I give in to that, because then writing feels strange -…

— Joan Larkin

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

— Nathalie Sarraute

I love poetry, but I find it so difficult to write well.

— Emily Susan Rapp

The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.

— Nikki Giovanni

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write…

— Jose Saramago