Quotes About Reflection

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

That is the best instruction you could ever give a poet: whether you're examining a bad line in a poem or a bad motive for action, keep well your repining - meaning, don't ignore the honest muttering in your head.

It is enough for a poet to be the guilty conscience of his age.

The best poems come from the world, go through the poet, and go back in to the world.

My working habit is to separate my aims as a painting from my aims as a poet. They come from very different places and ultimately lead me to very different places... I'll leave what I mean by 'places' ambiguous.

I'm a poet.

I think of the Tamil poet Subrahmanya Bharati every day, and he is an inspiration in my musical creations.

I try for a poetic language that says, This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where we must go. And this is what we must do.

I never really knew what to do with my hair to begin with. When I was fat, I had incredibly long, unkempt hair. And there was kind of a poetic justice to losing something I was hiding behind.

Everyone has ways of trying to find a way to memorise our past. There's something very poetic about that.

The music that we listen to these days, everything is right there in your face. There's no real mystery. It's not poetic. I want people to think. I want to make people listen to my lyrics.

I was taught that poems don't end, they just kind of stop. There's never an ending to a poem; it's a continuation for later. When I write, I write for me, and I write in poetic form.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all.

I used to do poetry in elementary school. I used to just write.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.

Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.

Poetry is necessary, but is the poet?

Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.

Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.