Quotes from Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold.

Nature does not complete things. She is chaotic. Man must finish, and he does so by making a garden and building a wall.

Nature's never quite Sure she hasn't erred In her vague design.

I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.

There is absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go slow.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

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

We love the things we love for what they are.

Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

We ran as if to meet the moon.

Let's get my incantation right: "I wish I may, I wish I might" Give earth another satellite.

Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.

Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave.

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.

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.