Quotes About Communication

Without poetry, stories would be told in sepia.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

I think translation is an impossible job, and I admire the people who do it in a way that brings poetry to us that we wouldn't have access to.

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

Poetic effect is the peculiar effect of an utterance which achieves most of its relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures.

Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.

Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

[I'm]a freak user of words, not a poet.

For even bad poetry has relevance for what it does not say for what it leaves out.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

An English poet writes, I think, just for people who are interested in poetry. An American poet writes, and feels that everyone ought to appreciate this. Then he has a deep sense of grievance . . .

It is not a waste to write beautiful prose or poetry for one person's eyes alone!

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

Poetry is talking on tiptoe.

Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.

Mr Witwould: "Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies." Mrs Millamant: "Only with those in verse.... I never pin up my hair with prose."

I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

Then others for breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.

Poems are difficult to silence.

...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.

Poetry is telling something to someone.

What is important-what lasts-in another language is not what is said but what is written. For the essence of an age, we look to its poetry and its prose, not its talk shows.

The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.