Quotes About Inspiration

Faith was the most powerful force in the universe.

People need symbols, something greater than their own lives.

One never knows be it days, weeks or years, when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

I believe in teaching, but I don't believe in going to school.

You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.

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

A poet never takes notes..you never take notes in a Love Affair.

What is done is done for the love of it- or not really done at all.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

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.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

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

The farm is a base of operations–a stronghold. You can withdraw into yourself there. Solitude for reflection is an essential ingredient in self-development. I think a person has to be withdrawn into himself to gather inspiration so that he is somebody when he comes out again among folks–when he "comes to market' with himself. He learns that he's got to be almost wastefully alone.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

I could say Elves to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. –

There are two kinds of teachers—the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies." (I hope I am remembered as a prodder.)

I make a virtue of my suffering From nearly everything that goes on round me. In other words, I know wherever I am, Being the creature of literature I am, I shall not lack for pain to keep me awake.

And poems are all that matter. The utmost of ambition is to lodge a few poems where they will be hard to get rid of. –

If the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand. Everything is still possible.