Paul Valery Quotes

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

I find a lot of poetry very disappointing, but I do have poets that I go back to. One book of poetry that I'd like to mention is 'The Exchange' by Sophie Cabot Black. Her poems are difficult without being too difficult.

Poetry is a mug's game.

I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own.

Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility less for his successors.

How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do" "Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

Romantic poetry had its heyday when people like Lord Byron were kicking it large. But you try and make a living as a poet today, and you'll find it's very different!

Poetry is not easy. Or should I say, real poetry is not easy.

Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

I can recite poetry, but I cannot write it.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Some directors were brilliant in the silent era but never felt at home in sound. It's like a sculptor being forced to take up painting.

All good poetry is forged slowly and patiently, link by link, with sweat and blood and tears.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

Even the greatest poets can't express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances.

The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

Doing representations of real people is not my strongpoint as a visual artist, and I know that.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.