Quotes By Author: Marianne Moore

“one must not borrow a long white beard and tie it onand threaten with the scythe of time the casually curious”

“Poetry…… a place for the genuine,Hands that can grasp, eyesthat can dilate, hair that can rise”

“… imaginary gardens with real toads in them …… if you demand on one hand,the raw material of poetry inall its rawness andthat which is on the other handgenuine, then you are interested in poetry.”

“Wolf’s wool is the best wool, but it cannot be sheared, because the wolf will not comply. With knowledge as with wolves’ surliness, the student studies voluntarily, refusing to be less than individual. He “gives his opinion and then rests upon it”; he renders service when there is no reward, and is too reclusive for some things to seem to touch him; not because he has no feeling but because he has so much.”

“He feared snakes, and tamedPharaoh’s rat, the rust-backed mongoose. No bustof it was made, but therewas pleasure for the rat. Its restlessness wasits excellence; it was praised for its wit;and the jerboa, like it,a small desert rat,and not famous, thatlives without water, hashappiness.”