Stephen Spender Quotes

There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses.

Poets will never be the highest-paid writers in the world. Instead, poetry will go on cutting a hand-made path through the mass-market insanity. For me, anyway, that path is the one that leads to the Chapel of the Grail.

We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.

Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.

whether they write poems or don't write poems, poets are best.

There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier.

So all my best is dressing old words new.

For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type.

Poet's food is love and fame.

Music and art is regarded as extra and can be the first thing that you cut in a school program, and it's completely not true. If you want to create really boring, frustrated human beings, then yeah, cut out art and science.

Be encouraged. Your heart is writing a poem on the world and it's being turned into a thousand songs.

Sometimes people save the best part of themselves for their art.

The creative phase of an idea coincides with the period during which it insists, cantankerously, on its boundaries, on what makes it different; but an idea becomes false and impotent when it seeks reconciliation, at cut-rate prices, with other ideas.

I don't see poetry as something that has to do with too much emotion anyway. It has to do with language.

Poetry has in a way been my bridge to my acting career. I had so many questions about my life, so I took to poetry to express my questions. I had questions about politics, family relationships, and more.

While it is unlikely that poetry or art shall eliminate the reality of war in the twenty-first century, it is thrilling to know there remain individuals, and even entire communities, still willing to invest in art and poetry's own uniquely explosive contributions to the great, and small, dramas of human history.

Lizzie Harris's debut collection, Stop Wanting, crafts images and lines of such arresting splendor that I am very often driven to joy at the feats of beauty and healing that language is capable of bringing into being.

I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.

An artist is only an ordinary man with a greater potentiality--same stuff, same make up, only more force. And the strong driving force usually finds his weak spot, and he goes cranked, or goes under.

Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.

I would like a simple life / yet all night I am laying / poems away in a long box.

My question is "when did other people give up the idea of being a poet?" You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?

Artists are nearest God. Into their souls he breathes his life, and from their hands it comes in fair, articulate forms to bless the world.

Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets.