Randall Jarrell said this quote

“ The cat's asleep; I whisper kittenTill he stirs a little and begins to purr--He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)He mewed until I heard him in the house.I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.What he says and what he sees are limited.My own response is even more constricted.I think, It's lucky; what you have is too.What do you have except--well, me?I joke about it but it's not a joke;The house and I are all he remembers.Next month how will he guess that it is winterAnd not just entropy, the universePlunging at last into its cold decline?I cannot think of him without a pang.Poor rumpled thing, why don't you seeThat you have no more, really, than a man?Men aren't happy; why are you? ”

Famous Quotes of Randall Jarrell

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I see at last that all the knowledgeI wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darknessAnd we call it wisdom. It is pain.

~ Randall Jarrell

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

~ Randall Jarrell

It's ugly, but is it art?

~ Randall Jarrell

When I was young and miserable and prettyAnd poor, I'd wishWhat all girls wish: to have a husband,A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wishIs womanish:That the boy putting groceries in my carSee me.

~ Randall Jarrell