Sherman Alexie Quotes

Poetry is a whim of Nature in her lighter moods; it requires nothing but its own madness and, lacking that, it becomes a soundless cymbal, a belfry without a bell.

... Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet - mayst not tell thy dreams'? Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved, And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

Thinking is always the stumbling stone to poetry.

Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him.

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.

You can't make poetry out of thought; poetry is passion. Linear thought must be seduced by wild mind, by the fires of ecstasy.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting! They derive from a slow and powerful root that we can’t see. Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

All emotions are the ore from which poetry may be sifted.

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

Art is the expression of the artist´s overflowing soul.

There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.

Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique.

Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.

A poet can't afford to be aloof. The tools of his trade are the people he bumps up against.

There's always been anger in the making of music or literature or dance.

An author accepting language's invitation to dance steps onto the floor of his her sensibility-charged consciousness and begins to move instinctively--even if with much dread--in ways that synchronize images, ideas, emotions, sounds, smells, ignorance, and knowledge.

Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.

Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.

Time sped. And the poet through sorrow Became like his suffering kind. Again he toiled over his poems To lighten the grief of his mind.

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child!

The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day; But on the ground, among the hooting crowds, He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.