Quotes About Writing

...after a night spent writing poetry, one is almost happy to hear the milkman at the door.

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

You're walking by the tomb of Battiades, Who knew well how to write poetry, and enjoy Laughter at the right moment, over the wine.

But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

I don't write poetry when I wish, I write when I can't, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!

I'm only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.

Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.

Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

I do not write for the public. You are my public and I hope to convert you.

Poetry is a rhythmical piece of writing that leaves the reader feeling that life is a little richer than before, a little more full of wonder, beauty, or just plain delight.

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.

Fiction and poetry are my first loves, but the really beautiful lyrical essay can do so much that other forms cannot.

I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.

I guess the quality that makes one write poetry keeps one from selling it.

Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.

Prose is a photography, poetry is a painting in oil-colors.

My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees.

Poetry does need a bit of ferocity. The only way to attend to the fractured world is to write a ferocious kind of music, to sing that volatility.

Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels.