Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon.

Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations.

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

I like poems that inspire, that make us think and reflect. It's like putting love into the world for whoever picks it up.

If I were to have a dream job, it would probably be a poet. Then again, I don't think I'm a very good poet!

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.

You don't have to live in a garage to write great poetry.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.

One of these days, I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit.

As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.

You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.

The few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest.