Quotes and Sayings about Poets

It is a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed, it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

A living poem had always been the words that came to mind when he tried to describe her to others.

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it.

Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.

Word to the wise writer: never underestimate your secondary characters! But watch them... they sneak off with stuff.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth.

I do have a tendency to walk on the dark side sometimes. I have suffered from depression, I know how that feels, I have an innate inclination that way. Writing does help with that.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.

I want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.

Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.

I listen to my words, but they fall far below
I let my music take me, where my heart wants to go

You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'

The written word endures, the spoken word disappears.

Pen, paper and books are the gunpowder of the mind.

Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together. They like being solitary together.

I'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.

It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring.
Renewed shall be blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king.

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep,
I am a thousands winds that blow,
I am the diamond glint on snow,
I am the sunnlight in ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I do not die.

What was it when I looked at you
What power has chained me through and through
And binds my heart with links so tight
I can not live without the sight - of you

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk without having feet
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared

When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.