Quotes About Writing

I feel that I'm a poet first. Not only was poetry the first genre in which I wrote, it's the genre that serves as the basis for my practice as a writer.

I began as a journalist for my pocketbook and a poet for my soul.

But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

I was writing poems when I was young, you know, because my father was a poet, so it was absolutely normal to follow my father.

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good poems.

I grew up writing. It was very natural in my household. My father was a poet, and his mother had been a novelist back in Hungary. I don't think I really thought about it being my career until high school, which is still pretty early, but it was a while there of just assuming this was something everyone did all day long.

I thought that if one wanted to be a writer, one had to write novels because I didn't know that one could be a poet.

I got out of Iowa all set to be a poet and a novelist, but you know what? It's really tough to make a living as a poet.

Anyone who holds a pen these days thinks he or she is a poet.

Basho is the great poet of Japan, writing in the second half of the 17th century, but his work is still incredibly fresh.

I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.

Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.

I know I'm not a wordsmith. And I don't write poetry. Sometimes I think I should, because it's really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels.

My father read poetry to me, encouraged me to memorize poems. But the writing of it was quite a different thing.

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

The more poetry you have in the head, the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all.

I've always written, all my life, and when I was very young I developed an interest in poetry.

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.