Poet Quotes

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

Maybe you're one of those people who writes poems, but rarely reads them. Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.

And remember this most of all: when it is darkest, that is when you can see the stars most clearly.

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

If the partridge didn't call at the wrong moment, Neither the hunter nor the falcon would know of it. It follows from this point also, That everyone's voice betrays him.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than any cause, though it's the cause that is usually most vilified.

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.

You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.

Why don't you think of [God] as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity... the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are.

Do not deprive me of my age. I have earned it.

Perhaps it is our obligation to be noble before it is our obligation to be happy.

Love is love. It is God-given, and a sacrament. It is not for any man to judge.

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.

Papa thought that any book worth reading twice was worth owning. So instead of buying desserts, we bought books.

The historic beauty of BJJ rests not with its ability to allow a smaller man to maim a larger man, but with its ability to allow any man of any size to survive.

Darkness is the womb from which a poet is born.

It was in that small lack of movement that Poet could see true horror. A mirror held up to the human race and how it can be manipulated. Ruined.

Write as an audience member. Write what you want to see, feel and hear.

Life writes the poetry, but it will always call for witnesses and scribes alike to tattoo its echoes upon the ghosts of trees.

Cosmos and its stars

Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead.

The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

In MoonlightNoSoft sweet paw on my cheekNoFur curled under my chinJustA sad space left behind - Gray cat gone away. [Ellie's poem]

Her shift in thinking was clearly conflicted. It must have been difficult to disavow something for which she had a deep love and in which she had been immersed so much of her life.

I try to think of metaphors that suit him best, but he was made of the sea and the stars and the sun, and one wouldn’t do him justice.

We all have the same pallet of emotional paints. It is how we pigment them on the canvas of life that dictates our artistry.

I do so love hearing people speak passionately on any subject, other than themselves.

You claim to love God, and yet you disobey GodThis is a bizarre way of reasoningSurely, the lover, if his love is true, Is most obedient to the one he loves.

The words he said, too, must be human enough to bleed.

Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way--and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.

My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out.

So much of control is not authoritative action but mindful waiting.

And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

The first and the last steps on the ladder of life are the most insightful.

Everyone should follow his predetermined path.

In The Land of Poetry and Fighting, Efficiency rules the throne. I try to live here, so I shave my head because hair is dead and dead is inefficient.

Disappointment is the end of an illusion.

By the time you have a platform for saying what you want, you’ve already become part of the system. It’s how it works.

Sometimes reality is a fantastically traumatic nightmare.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

A counter to a jab is a left hook. What’s the counter to prejudice?

Thinking is easy, acting difficult, and to put one's thoughts into actions the most difficult thing in the world.

True wisdom lies in the pure roots of untouchedly souls.

You'll learn wisdom for yourself, if you have become sedentary.

The Best Thing I love about being a writer and a poet is, I can make up my own words to fit my imagination.