On Poetry Quotes

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

Poetry is one of the few nasty childhood habits I've managed to grow out of

For even bad poetry has relevance for what it does not say for what it leaves out.

Writing poetry is a process of discovery...you can smell the poem before you see it....Like some animal.

Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

I don't think the nature of my poetry is satirical or even ironic, I think it's essentially lyrical but again I don't know if it's my position to say what my poetry is like.

Poetry in motion walking by my side, her lovely locomotion keeps my eyes open wide.

If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the Igbo language, I write my own dialect. I write some poetry in that dialect.

All poetry comes from repetition.

Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could.

Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time.

Poetry is the alchemy which teaches us to convert ordinary materials into gold.

The works have to look like they're confident. But they also have to look sort of troubled. It's this weird thing: "Does that look confident and troubled?" It's a bit like difficult poetry.

I never wanted my books to be mistaken for poetry or fiction books; I wanted to write reference books. But instead of referring to something, they refer to nothing.

Poetry which owes no man anything, owes nevertheless one debt - an image of the world in which men can again believe.

Poetry is what makes my toenails twinkle.

The piety of the Hebrew prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the power of poetry to raise the low and offensive.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

If we are moved by a poem, it has meant something, perhaps something important, to us; if we are not moved, then it is, as poetry, meaningless.

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

You've got to love libraries. You've got to love books. You've got to love poetry. You've got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.

Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.

The things I like to find in a story are punch and poetry.

I think I love humor in poetry, but not that slapstick cheap easy humor, but that uncomfortable, "did she say that out loud?" kind of humor.

In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.

I think that poetry is important when you are shipwrecked, when the ordinary structures that hold you up are gone.

Poetry keeps longing alive.

The dead made this world. We didn't make it. They made the poetry and the songs and the customs.

Poetry isn't an efficient tool for preserving experience, any more than it's an efficient mode of communication, but who says that it should be efficient?

If it doesn't work horizontally as prose... it probably won't work any better vertically pretending to be poetry.

I love films. I love music. I love poetry and stories. All of that I feel… I sort of get very excited and fed by.

Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm.

Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm, well-being, and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga.

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time.

Poetry is such an ancient art, and I consider myself young within that art.

my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.

It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.

Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.

Poetry has become the higher algebra of metaphors.

The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.

Like contemporary poetry, philosophy is one of those things, especially at the beginning stages, most people would rather do than study - which is why most of what gets done is so impoverished.

As a prose writer, I work with language; and those who work with language turn to poetry for renewal.

We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.

Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.

When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of.

Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

It is not a waste to write beautiful prose or poetry for one person's eyes alone!

I think my brain is full of collisions and that's how I like to read and process information. I'm always comparing things and I think I do that subconsciously when I'm reading books of poetry.