All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends.Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.”

“One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.”

“Ask him why there are hypocrites in the world.”Because it is hard to bear the happiness of others.”When are we happy?”When we desire nothing and realize that possession is only momentary, and so are forever playing.”What is regret?”To realize that one has spent one’s life worrying about the future.”What is sorrow?”To long for the past.”What is the highest pleasure?”To hear a good story.”

“The Children’s HourBetween the dark and the daylight,When the night is beginning to lower,Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,That is known as the Children’s Hour.I hear in the chamber above meThe patter of little feet,The sound of a door that is opened,And voices soft and sweet.From my study I see in the lamplight,Descending the broad hall stair,Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,And Edith with golden hair.A whisper, and then a silence:Yet I know by their merry eyesThey are plotting and planning togetherTo take me by surprise.A sudden rush from the stairway,A sudden raid from the hall!By three doors left unguardedThey enter my castle wall!They climb up into my turretO’er the arms and back of my chair;If I try to escape, they surround me;They seem to be everywhere.They almost devour me with kisses,Their arms about me entwine,Till I think of the Bishop of BingenIn his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,Because you have scaled the wall,Such an old mustache as I amIs not a match for you all!I have you fast in my fortress,And will not let you depart,But put you down into the dungeonIn the round-tower of my heart.And there will I keep you forever,Yes, forever and a day,Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,And moulder in dust away!”

“My HeartI’m not going to cry all the timenor shall I laugh all the time,I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,not just a sleeper, but also the big,overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says “That’s not like Frank!,” all to the good! I don’t wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,often. I want my feet to be bare,I want my face to be shaven, and my heart–you can’t plan on the heart, butthe better part of it, my poetry, is open.”

“If you only write when you’re inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you’ll never be a novelist because you’re going to have to make your word count today and those words aren’t going to wait for you whether you’re inspired or not.You have to write when you’re not inspired. And you have to write the scenes that don’t inspire you. And the weird thing is that six months later, a year later, you’ll look back at them and you can’t remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you just wrote because they had to be written next.The process of writing can be magical. …Mostly it’s a process of putting one word after another.”

“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”

“That’s not a run in your stocking, it’s a hand on your leg.”

“come back so i can say yes this time do it again now that i know what to call what you didthis time i’ll be ready i like it rough now and i’m done with romance i never met another man who loved me so much at first sight he had to hurt me to do it”

“Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.”

“Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI’ll make you little jackets;I’ll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There’ll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the penniesTo save in his bank;Anne shall have the keysTo make a pretty noise with.Life must go on,Though good men die;Anne, eat your breakfast;Dan, take your medicine;Life must go on;I forget just why.”

“Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.And be it gash or gold it will not comeAgain in this identical disguise.”

“Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,Are a substantial world, both pure and good:Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”

“Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.”

“the only thing required to be a woman is to identifyas one.- period, end of story.”