Jill Scott Quotes

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

First and foremost, I'm an oral storyteller - I'll make a poetic choice over a grammatical choice every single time.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, Student of our sweet English tongue, I never indulge in poetics - Unless I am down with rheumatics.

If you want to be a poet, you can just write it on a napkin, and it's the length of the napkin, I guess. But usually you decide you'll rhyme it, or you'll have a formula. In radio, that's something called, 'Close your eyes and listen.'

Poetry is meant to be heard.

I love an imperfect rhyme.

The difference between 'lighght' and another type of poem with more words is that it doesn't have a reading process. Even a five-word poem has a beginning, middle, and end. A one-word poem doesn't. You can see it all at once. It's instant.

I love clever lyrics.

Poetry was invented as an mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers.

I also write poems, so that is something that I really enjoy.

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

I keep trying to define 'poetry,' but it's so difficult.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

People are so used to reading novels now, they just read a poem straight through to get the meaning. And that's something totally different from the slow way you read something if it's a tune; which to me a poem has to be.

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

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.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.