Famous Quotes

And wonder, dread and warhave lingered in that landwhere loss and love in turnhave held the upper hand.

~ Simon Armitage

English:Ô, take this eager dance you fool, don’t brandish your stick at me. I have several reasons to travel on, on to the endless sea: I have lost my love. I’ve drunk my purse. My girl has gone, and left me rags to sleep upon. These old man’s gloves conceal the hands with which I’ve killed but one!Francais: Idiot, prends cette danse ardente, au lieu de tendre ton bâton.J'en ai des raisons de voyager encore sur la mer infinie: J'ai perdu l'amour et j'ai bu ma bourse.Ma belle m'a quitté, j'ai ses haillons pour m'abriter. Mes gants de vieillard cachent les mains d'un fameux assassin!

~ Roman Payne

Paris and HelenHe called her: golden dawnShe called him: the wind whistlesHe called her: heart of the skyShe called him: message bringerHe called her: mother of pearl barley woman, rice provider, millet basket, corn maid, flax princess, all-maker, weefShe called him: fawn, roebuck, stag, courage, thunderman, all-in-green, mountain strider keeper of forests, my-love-ridesHe called her: the tree isShe called him: bird dancingHe called her: who stands, has stood, will always standShe called him: arriverHe called her: the heart and the womb are similarShe called him: arrow in my heart.

~ Judy Grahn

Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp. ... Like John Donne, man lies in a close prison, yet it is dear to him. Like Donne's, his thoughts at times overleap the sun and pace beyond the body. If I term humanity a slime mold organism it is because our present environment suggest it. If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there. ... If I dream by contrast of the eventual drift of the star voyagers through the dilated time of the universe, it is because I have seen thistledown off to new worlds and am at heart a voyager who, in this modern time, still yearns for the lost country of his birth.

~ Loren Eiseley

Impatience kills quickly.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

The very essence of I is being killed by You.

~ Santosh Kalwar

He remembers which sisterI like least and askshow she is doing.(lines 9-11 of the poem 'Divorce')

~ Carrie Etter

Poets to ComePOETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,Arouse! Arousefor you must justify meyou must answer.I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,Leaving it to you to prove and define it,Expecting the main things from you.

~ Walt Whitman

In this quiet place on a quiet streetwhere no one ever finds usgently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain.--from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street

~ Aberjhani

We speak in (rich) monotones. Our poetry is haunted by the music it has left behind. Orpheus shrinks to a poet when he looks back, with the impatience of reason, on a music stronger than death.

~ George Steiner

Maybe if I could slip into Sylvia's mind, sort out the spices in her rack, alphabetize them and dust them off. Maybe then I'd understand how it's the little things that pull you under.

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

~ Helen Vendler

O rose, you look sick.O rose, wake up and sing.

~ Santosh Kalwar

A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.

~ William Stafford

Therefore, since the world has stillMuch good, but much less good than ill,And while the sun and moon endureLuck's a chance, but trouble's sure,I'd face it as a wise man would,And train for ill and not for good.

~ A.e. Housman

Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.

~ Charles Simic

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,O, what a panic's in thy breastie!

~ Robert Burns

And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.

~ Walt Whitman

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

~ Mario Cuomo

One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.

~ Jane Hirshfield

She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir.

~ Charles Dickens

We are all old-timers,each of us holds a locked razor.

~ Robert Lowell

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

~ William H. Gass

When I throw back my head and howlPeople (women mostly) sayBut you've always done what you want, You always get your way- A perfectly vile and foulInversion of all that's been.What the old ratbags meanIs I've never done what I don't.So the shit in the shuttered chateauWho does his five hundred wordsThen parts out the rest of the dayBetween bathing and booze and birdsIs far off as ever, but soIs that spectacled schoolteaching sod(Six kids, and the wife in pod, And her parents coming to stay)...Life is an immobile, locked, Three-handed struggle betweenYour wants, the world's for you, and (worse)The unbeatable slow machineThat brings what you'll get. Blocked, They strain round a hollow stasisOf havings-to, fear, faces.Days sift down it constantly. Years.--The Life with the Hole in It

~ Philip Larkin

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From Poetry is Not a Luxury)

~ Audre Lorde

To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.

~ Virginia Woolf

In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.

~ Charles Simic

Language is fossil Poetry.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.

~ T.s. Eliot

Let be be finale of seem.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

~ Wallace Stevens

Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you.

~ Annie Finch

Cansado,sobre todo,de estar siempre conmigo,de hallarme cada día,cuando termina el sueño,allí, donde me encuentre,con las mismas naricesy con las mismas piernas...

~ Oliverio Girondo

May your love for me be likethe scent of the evening seadrifting inthrough a quiet windowso i do not have to runor chase or fall... to feel youall i have to dois breathe.

~ Sanober Khan

the onewho will jolt awakeall the unwrittenthe unsungand the unlived in me. i am waitingfor him.

~ Sanober Khan

i hope thatwhoever you arewherever you areand no matter howyou are feelingyou will always have somethingto smile about.

~ Sanober Khan

your smile.is the ultimategolden dream.all the poemsin the worldare waking up from.

~ Sanober Khan

be the kiss in my hairthat no one seesmove, when i movesigh, when i sigh...be that line from a poemthat i hold in my eyes.

~ Sanober Khan

and the afterglow...of your gaze...is the onlysweater that I need.

~ Sanober Khan

I will learn your anger. I will lick your sadness.I will feast on your hunger.

~ Caitlyn Siehl

I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to me to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.

~ Fernando Pessoa