Poets and intellectuals...are the ones the tyrants go after first.
When you have crush you become nothing but a poet
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
All a poet can do today is warn.
Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.
In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.
Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.
Poetry was not meant to be a workhorse; it was not designed to paint pretty moral pictures of life; it was not brought into being to confuse us with cryptograms, or high platitudes, or pompous pretensions. The poet was meant to be a seer; he was desi...
Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that on...
How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken light-bulb?” goes the old Lojban joke. “Two: one to decide what to change it into and one to decide what kind of bulb emits broken light.
A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was pr...
The little poets sing of little things: Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings; Lovers who kissed and then were made as one, And modest flowers waving in the sun. The mighty poets write in blood and tears And agony that, flame-like, bi...
When I read poetry, I want to feel myself suddenly larger … in touch with—or at least close to—what I deem magical, astonishing. I want to experience a kind of wonderment. And when you report back to your own daily world after experiencing the ...
Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should expe...
Words are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in "foreign commerce" on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word hous...
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; b...
Fights begin and end with handshakes.
The storm before the calm.
Every poet — every storyteller — requires motivation.
STUFF POETS STILL LIKE: POETRY
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
