Poetry Quotes

I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat.

Paul Engle

I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills around Cedar Rapids, repeating the lines over and over until I had them right, making some of the rhythm of the horse help.

Paul Engle

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

Philip Levine

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

Philip Levine

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.

Plutarch

For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry.

Paul Muldoon

One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

Paul Muldoon

The other side of it is that, despite all that, people reach out to poetry at the key moments in their lives.

Paul Muldoon

We simply have not kept in touch with poetry.

Paul Muldoon

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Phyllis McGinley

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

Pablo Neruda

There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

Phil Ochs

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collectio...

P. J. O'Rourke

More modern poetry is written than read.

P. J. O'Rourke

I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.

Pauley Perrette

I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.

Peter Porter

If I have to make a self-portrait, I would put poetry and rebellion on the list. To be able to walk on a wire, to be able to juggle six hoops, you need focus, another word for tenacity, which is passion.

Philippe Petit

When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep.

Patti Smith

What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

Patti Smith

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley