Quotes About Inspiration

I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems

Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

Often one spends weeks trying to write a poem out of the conscious mind that never comes to anything - these are sort of 'ideal' poems that one feels ought to be written, but don't because (I fancy) they lack the vital spark of self-interest. A 'real' poem is a pleasure to write.

There is bad in all good authors

What one writes is based so much on the kind of person one is, the kind of environment one has had and has now. One doesn't really choose the poetry one writes, one writes the kind of poetry one has to write, or one can write.

If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.

My mother carried on and supported us her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

Don't scorn your life just because it's not dramatic, or it's impoverished, or it looks dull, or it's workaday. Don't scorn it. It is where poetry is taking place if you've got the sensitivity to see it, if your eyes are open." --Philip Levine, describing what he learned from William Carlos Williams, via NPR

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

There is more to being a great leader than just doing a task well. There is communication, empathy, respect, and compassion. You do the last one well and they will jump thru hurdles for you.

He had always loved to draw and paint, begging to be bought pencils, paint boxes, and paper rather than toys, spending hours wrapped up in worlds of his own creation.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

Sometimes, on our way through the world, we meet someone who touches our heart in a way others don't.

The radio was playing "Easter Parade" and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin "Easter Parade" and "White Christmas."… Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off the belief it inspires is what counts.