The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
Dr. SeussA cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest.
Alexander PopeI write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.
Maya AngelouThe first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.
Dylan ThomasIn all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.
Maya AngelouThe Marshall guitar amplifier doesn’t just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one.
Brian EnoMy unpredictability is what separates me. If you move in so many ways, your opponent is not focused on what he’s doing. He’s focusing in on what you’re doing, and it freezes him. When they freeze and you hit, they shatter like glass.
Conor McGregorI would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.
Edgar Allan PoeThe poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.
Virginia WoolfPoets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
Richard P. FeynmanI was out of my bed in one second, trembling with excitement, and I dashed to the door and into the adjoining room, where I could watch the streets below from the windows.
Hermann HesseAmerica makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.
E. E. CummingsWe are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.
William ShakespeareI decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
SocratesStand a little less between me and the sun.
DiogenesA poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar WildeI discovered after going to music festivals that I am a rock fan. I love the guitars, the phrasing, and the abandon of rock fans.
Beyonce KnowlesBut let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Khalil GibranEvery age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Jean-Paul SartreNo man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry AdamsWhen written in Chinese, the word ‚crisis‘ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
John F. KennedyThe poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.
AristotleMysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!
Joseph AddisonThese poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.
Dylan ThomasI have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.
Robert FrostI need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.
Edgar Allan PoeI imagine that yes is the only living thing.
E. E. CummingsFor awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
F. Scott FitzgeraldMay I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
Franz KafkaLulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
Alexander PopeFor me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.
Brian EnoI would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Virginia WoolfThis life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William ShakespeareThe writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
Karl MarxThe rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.
Edgar Allan PoeIf you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.
Brian EnoNothing can have value without being an object of utility.
Karl MarxWhy are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?
Woody AllenI have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.
Charles BukowskiOne merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
VoltaireA novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.
Fyodor DostoevskyWords differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.
Blaise PascalI like the sound a typewriter makes.
Paul AusterMeaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
Hermann HesseThe greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.
John RuskinI am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.
Fidel CastroLife has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.
Jean-Paul SartreNo one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry AdamsHelp others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.
Arnold SchwarzeneggerNo race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
Booker T. WashingtonIn most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.
Steve JobsDoubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.
William ShakespeareLove possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.
Khalil GibranWhat a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.
William ShakespeareSuperstition is the poetry of life.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheWe are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
Salvador DaliMaybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.
Dr. SeussPound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.
Ernest HemingwayThe poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
Socrates