Anne Waldman Quotes

A poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.

I've been writing since I was 10 or 11. I started with poetry because that was the easiest thing. It just kind of came naturally. I think at that time West Coast hip hop was huge; all these kids around me were like, 'I want to be a rapper.' But I'm a white girl, not going to be a rapper.

The funny thing about writing is I think a lot of people assume that you're sitting in a garret with a quill pen for hour after hour.

Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.

I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry.

Working with language requires beauty for me.

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

I used to spend a lot of time dreaming and writing poetry.

I'm a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.

When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?

They wanted to come in after the pounds", explained Pooh, "so I let them. It's the best way to write poetry, letting things come.

I always see nice images like that but I don't know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.

In poor environment, I find great inspiration. Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression.

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.

I keep all my poems in my journals and lock them away. They are the start of everything.

I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.