Famous Quotes

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

~ Kay Ryan

I am suggesting that the radical of poetry lies not in theresolution of doubts but in their proliferation

~ C.d. Wright

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew

~ Robert Browning

Cut my life into pizzas. this is my plastic fork. oven baking, no breathing, dont give a fuck if its carbs that i'm eating' -Catherine Spann

~ Catherine Spann

I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.

~ Pablo Neruda

i want to be in love with youthe same wayi am in love with the moonwith the lightshiningout of its soul.

~ Sanober Khan

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

~ Plato

sometimes i don't know, which momentwhich cool gust of wind will come,and enchant metousling my hairand my heart, stirring...that familiar ache of poetry, which drop will kissthe old wrench in my soulreminding me, all over againi miss you better in the rain.

~ Sanober Khan

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

~ Gustave Flaubert

I regret to say I'munable to reply to your unexpressed desires.

~ Harryette Mullen

How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)

~ Joseph Campbell

How to Write a PoemCatch the airaround the butterfly.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys.

~ Holly Black

The rain set early in tonight,The sullen wind was soon awake,It tore the elm-tops down for spite,And did its best to vex the lake:I listened with heart fit to break.When glided in Porphyria; straightShe shut the cold out and the storm,And kneeled and made the cheerless grateBlaze up and all the cottage warm

~ ;Robert Browning

Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—”“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry,” said Tessa

~ Cassandra Clare

ولأنني رغم القبور..ورغم موت الأرضأرفض أن أموت

~ فاروق جويدة

I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.

~ W.b. Yeats

Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain't no bird that's my equal. - Twilight

~ Kathryn Lasky

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

~ W.s. Merwin

Free verse is like free love, it is a contradiction in terms.

~ G.k. Chesterton

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

~ Stephen Sondheim

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,And Yesterday, or Centuries before?The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

~ Emily Dickinson

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

~ John Clare

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.

~ Dorianne Laux

This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.

~ Anna Akhmatova

This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.

~ Aberjhani

Sometimes I think,I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.

~ Sanober Khan

Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests

~ Karl Lagerfeld

And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.

~ John Donne

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

~ Julio Cortázar

one day, when tenderness has become the single rule of the morning,/ I will wake in your arms. perhaps your skin will be overly gorgeous./ and the light will include the impossible understanding of love.

~ José Luís Peixoto

I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.

~ Roger Zelazny

John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.

~ J.d. Salinger

Not everything can be felt and not everything will be ever understood.

~ Santosh Kalwar

So the nymphs they spoke,we kissed and laid.By noontime’s hourour love was made.Like braided chains of crocus stems,we lay entwined, I laid with them.Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,our bodies draping wearily,we slept, I slept so lucidly,with hopes to stay this memory.

~ Roman Payne

Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.

~ Criss Jami

...but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it...

~ Frank O'hara

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades.

~ Boris Pasternak

I wanted the past to go away, I wantedto leave it, like another country; I wantedmy life to close, and openlike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the songwhere it fallsdown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;I wantedto hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalivefor a little while.

~ Mary Oliver

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.

~ Santōka Taneda