Kenny Leon Quotes

I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.

Fiction will always be my greatest love, with poetry close behind.

'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams is a great play. I had to read it for school when I was younger, but I started writing scripts after that. That's what got me into writing.

There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas.

I have written a lot about the fine arts, but I'd never written about the literary arts, and so on some level Dante really, you know, spoke to me, as new ground but also familiar ground.

I am now in the full maturity of my age and vigor of my mind. Persons of various descriptions have repeatedly solicited me to turn my mind to dramatical composition. It was, indeed, the first amusement of my thoughts in my school-boy cell.

I'm the Emily Dickinson of screenplays.

I really came to literature through poetry.

I never wanted to be a playwright.

Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.

Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

When people asked me what I was going to do when I grow up, I always said, 'I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write screenplays. I'm going to write books. I'm going to write plays. That's what I'm going to do.'

Poetry is the elder sister of history, the mother of language, the ancestress of civilization.

I wrote things for the school's newspaper, and - like all teenagers - I dabbled in poetry.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

I like poems and keep sharing them online.

As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.

All my big heroes are literary, writers.

When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.

I shall, in due time, be a Poet.

Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.

A lot of American playwrights seem to have a career as a playwright. I don't consider it a career at all.

I was an English major in college, so I really liked spoken word and poetry; it was what I did before I wrote music.