Philip James Bailey Quotes

The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer.

Lest it sound as if I resent my day job, I have to say that my day job is the reason I write, and it has been the best thing for me as a writer.

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets food is love and fame.

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage.

For me, a poet is someone who is 'in contact.' Someone through whom a current is passing.

Angel and Muse approach from without; the Angel sheds light and the Muse gives form (Hesiod learned of them). Gold leaf or chiton-folds: the poet finds his models in his laurel coppice. But the Duende, on the other hand, must come to life in the nethermost recesses of the blood.

With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her ah, when Did I not need her, solitary else?

Once a year I try writing a poem, usually because I've read some poetry that amazed me and I want to do that.

The poet must put on the passion he wants to represent.

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.

Glow-worms on the ground are moving, As if in the torch-dance circling.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

You have a point," said Fronto, "and even a poet must occasionally bow to logic.

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist, but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.

There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

Chopin--Two embalmers at work upon a minor poetthe scent of tuberosesAutumn rain.

Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times.

...As an artist, you need the naysayers and the nonbelievers to add fuel to your creative fire.