Poetry Quotes

"If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness."

"I am absolutely convinced that my life was redeemed by poetry."

"Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry."

"We go to poetry, we go to literature in general, to be forwarded within ourselves."

"How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?"

"One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear."

"Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry."

"Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you've got to burn away all the peripherals."

"There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking."

"I read poetry to save time."

"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."

"Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away."

"With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion."

"I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots."

"He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion."

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."

"I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream."

"The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight."

"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order."

"I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple."

"The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan."

"Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments."

"Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.'"

"Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music."

"When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry."

"What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper."

"We explore our environment, more than we are compelled to utter poetry, when we're toddlers. We start doing that later. Before that happens, every child is a scientist."

"Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry."

"Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance."

"I thought to spend my declining years writing poetry and teaching - but that won't pay the Bergdorf's bill. I think I'll move to somewhere life is cheaper."

"Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated."

"Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew."

"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."

"Thinking in its lower grades, is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry."

"People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work."

"All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry."

"I want to prove that if you write in strict meter and rhyme about subjects people care about, they will buy poetry."

"I have felt great advances in my poetry, the main one being a growing victory over word nuances and a superfluity of adjectives."

"I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission."

"I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world."

"As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing."

"There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired."

"I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music."

"It's not easy to define poetry."

"Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places - on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc."

"I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible."

"But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way."

"I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then."

"From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be."

"Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends."