Stephen Hough Quotes

I love playing with language and the rhythm of language - for some reason, this seems so much easier for me to do when I get to make things up than when writing nonfiction.

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

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes.

Without poetry, stories would be told in sepia.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

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

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means.

Poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling.

I write the occasional poem. I think my dabbling in poetry makes me better at screenplays. Poetry teaches the value of condensing, the importance of talking in a few words.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

I've always loved writing.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

I'm a writer; I like to retain subtlety and nuance.

What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

You have to really understand how people speak, and you have to reconstruct it... Most pleasure in writing, you know, is in inventing.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

Poets write the words you have heard before but in a new sequence.

I've been interested in writing and storytelling since I learned to read, but it wasn't until I read Dylan Thomas, when I was 14, that I became interested in language itself, and saw it as more than a transparent medium for a story.

For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.

I became an author because I love words. I enjoyed playing with them when I was a kid, writing stories and plays, and doing whatever I could think to do with words. I kept my love of them growing up and still love to see what they can do.