John Keating: Language was developed for one endeavor, and that is - Mr. Anderson? Come on, are you a man or an amoeba? [pause] John Keating: Mr. Perry? Neil: To communicate. John Keating: No! To woo women!
Hopkins: [reading his poem] "The cat sat on the mat" John Keating: Congratulations, Mr. Hopkins. You have the first poem to ever have a negative score on the Pritchard scale.
[the students are climbing onto Keating's desk to see a new perspective] John Keating: Now, don't just walk off the edge like lemmings! Look around you!
Pitts: Too bad. Knox: It's worse than "Too bad," Pittsie. It's a tragedy. A girl this beautiful in love with such a jerk. Pitts: All the good ones go for jerks. You know that.
Meeks: Me and Pitts are working on a hi-fi system. It shouldn't be that hard to, uh, to put together. Pitts: Yeah... Uh, I might be going to Yale... Uh, but I might not.
I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so...
I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.
If there has been one overriding change in poetic practice, it is that under the influence of free verse the poets have made a primary virtue out of exactitude and economy of meaning: this has replaced metrical skill as the first thing the poet tunes...
There is no moral to my song, I praise no right, I blame no wrong; I tell of things that I have seen, I show the man that I have been As simply as a poet can Who knows himself poet and man.
I say, 'Get me some poets as managers.' Poets are our original systems thinkers. They contemplate the world in which we live and feel obligated to interpret, and give expression to it in a way that makes the reader understand how that world runs. Poe...
Let the systematic theologian spell it out. Let the artists throw out thoughts and slants, maybe even slants no one else has thought of. They should give another view of something familiar to help us learn more about it. They should deal with love, l...
Maybe I just didn’t want it to be Benny because he really loves her, and if I was wrong about that, it’d be depressing. Who wants to be depressed?” “Poets,” Eve decided. “You have to think they must.” “Okay, other than poets.
POST Not a head stands out A finger rises Then it is the voice that one knows A signal a brief note A man leaves Up above a cloud that passes by No one goes in And the night keeps its secret
Gardens are poems Where you stroll with your hands in your pockets. (Les jardins sont des poemes Ou l'on se promene les mains dans les poches.)
If you can change the way you think in time you will notice a change in your heart and also a change in your life and the way you see things.
the poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt." "There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
If the partridge didn't call at the wrong moment, Neither the hunter nor the falcon would know of it. It follows from this point also, That everyone's voice betrays him.
Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.
I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the po...
Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.
