Thomas Campbell Quotes

If I'm working on a poem, it's at the forefront of my mind; I'm working on it when I'm cooking dinner or stretched out on the sofa. But if I don't really have it by the 10th draft, I know it just isn't going to jell.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

I feel like I can't write something that has a real emotion in it if I can't connect to that emotion.

Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative.

Each person is responsible only for his or her own sins. Even the Christian doctrine of 'original sin' does not mean that humans are punished for the sin of the first human pair but, rather, that humans seem inevitably to copy the sin of the first human pair.

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.'

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

I can see a scene in my head, and when I try to get it down in words on paper, the words are clunky; the scene is not coming across right. So frustrating. And there are days where it keeps flowing. Open the floodgates, and there it is. Pages and pages coming. Where the hell does this all come from? I don't know.

Sometimes I do feel like I write the same story again and again. And for me, I am always looking for a place with a kind of redemption.

I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.

I despair of ever writing excellent poetry.

If I were to have a dream job, it would probably be a poet. Then again, I don't think I'm a very good poet!

Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil.

When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

You don't have to live in a garage to write great poetry.

When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?'

I was told I had an overabundance of original sin.

When I was 14 years old, I was crazy about Dr. Seuss. I loved the words he made up, and I just thought, 'Well, if he can make up words, then I can make up words.'