Paul Valery Quotes

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

I always see nice images like that but I don't know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.

Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own way of working.

Poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit, and the very phrase of angels.

Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him.

Poetry - poiesis means a thing made.

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

All emotions are the ore from which poetry may be sifted.

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts - in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms.

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

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

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.

Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

I'm partial to epic poetry, which might be surprising given that I don't write poetry at all. The combination of rollicking storytelling with musical language seems to me the highest achievement.

I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

I've written poetry most of my life.

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.

To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.