Luke Davies Quotes

I always think W.S. Merwin's poems will last of anyone writing today. If I had to bet on posterity I would bet Merwin. My poems could easily evaporate. So I don't know. If you find yourself as a writer thinking about posterity you should probably go out for a brisk walk or something.

'A collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival.

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry.

The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.

I'm a wizard at poetry.

Poetry is all I write, whether for books or readings or for the National Theatre or for the opera house and concert hall or even for TV.

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

I would love to write something that people would still read 50 or 100 years from now. That comes with growing older, I think.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

Well-written words are music.

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

Nobody will go on being remembered for a very long time, unless you're Shakespeare or Milton. I have no hope of being remembered at all.

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

History proves that most writers get forgotten anyway. That's very likely to happen to my books, and if I'm extremely lucky, maybe one of my books will survive.

Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my great refuge through adolescence.

There are men who can write poetry, and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write.

Literature has always been the greatest fuel for my imagination.

My first love is literature.

I want to leave behind a literary legacy.

I'm a poet.

Anyone who holds a pen these days thinks he or she is a poet.