Writing
Quotes
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I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
Responsibilities. A Coat
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
The Figure a Poem Makes. Preface to Collected Poems, 1939
All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.
Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.
A Way Out, 1929
Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.
Comment
For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing ... is discovering.
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
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On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
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On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays