On Poetry Quotes

The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing

The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system.

Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

Don't Worry Be Happy

In many ways, religion comes from the same place in us that art comes from. The language of the human heart if poetry

Moth: I gave you my life. Flame: I allowed you to kiss me.

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.

It is strange how often a heart must be broken Before the years can make it wise.

I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

The unconscious mind writes poetry if it's left alone.

It is never what a poem says that matters, but what it is.

I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.

The poetry of earth is never dead When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide I cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.

Cold hearts don't bleed. Still they pray for eternity, never seeing tomorrow.

Poetry has its own laws speaking for the life of the planet. It is a language that wants to bring back together what the other words have torn apart.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something

If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism.

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving

Peace is always beautiful.

Let our scars fall in love.

A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

In pale moonlight / the wisteria's scent / comes from far away.

In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don’t care about my cinema. In Europe they don’t know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!

They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.

Painting is silent poetry.

A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?

Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can only be a footnote.

The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.

I think that in the process of writing, all kinds of unexpected things happen that shift the poet away from his plan and that these accidents are really what we mean when we talk about poetry.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!

Poetry is the tunnel at the end of the light.

Only in Russia poetry is respected - it gets people killed.

I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.