Robert Pinsky Quotes

All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love.

In writing, I want to be remembered for telling good stories in beautiful and powerful language, using the poetry of words to reflect the thematic concerns of compelling stories.

I am Xerxes, great king, king of kings, the king of all countries which speak all kinds of languages, the king of the entire big, far-reaching earth.

A fairy tale is the kind of story in which one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar

John Paul II spoke to the commoner and to the king, to the tyrant and to the democrat in that same language of freedom.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language.

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.

Language is the machine of the poet.

But there was no room at the inn"; the inn is the gathering place of public opinion; so often public opinion locks its doors to the King.

Time was our very first king. We all live our lives to the aggressive ticking of the clock. We don't question that our lives are a grid of seconds; even our pulses oblige. No succeeding king can hope to hold this kind of power.

I love the language, it sounds as if it should be writ on satin with syllables which breathe of the sweet South

Elvis was the king. No doubt about it.

If you play a king, it's better if everybody treats you like a king.

You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?'

I long To hear the story of your life, which must Take the ear strangely.

The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.

An autobiography is only 'a sort of life' - it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.

Harmonious words render ordinary ideas acceptable; less ordinary, pleasant; novel and ingenious ones, delightful. As pictures and statues, and living beauty, too, show better by music-light, so is poetry irradiated, vivified, glorified', and raised into immortal life by harmony.

I came to see a king, not a row of corpses.

When it comes to health, diet is the Queen, but exercise is the King.

Sleep, ignorant of pain, sleep, ignorant of grief, may you come to us blowing softly, kindly, kindly come king.