Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Yes, I’m still going to misbehave!

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

I’m nobody, who are you?

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

On the subject of literary genres, I’ve always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I’d love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.

No thieves, no traitors, no interventionists! This time the revolution is for real!

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Our Revolution emerged where it was least expected by the empire, in a hemisphere where it was used to acting like an all-powerful master.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!

I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.