John Dryden Quotes

Taking time to sit back and watch and think about what you've seen is important. Traveling did a great deal to me. I found that when I travel and just sit in the corner and watch, a million ideas come to me.

'Swan,' by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

I do not seek. I find.

I found the poems in the fields And only wrote them down

I always think it's a mistake when you actually have to set books aside and actually sit down and research something. I always think they've got to come from within.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

For solace, I love a book that opens up my perspective.

I'm a thinker and feeler and dreamer and explorer.

Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

Verses are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences. For the sake of a verse one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals feel how birds fly, and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

I'm incredibly restless. I read a lot of poetry. I also find myself reading the first 20 pages of everything, looking for something. And you know what? I'm usually looking for the book I'm writing. And it's not out there!

The book one must read to learn natural sciences is the book of nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.

The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvellous ideas.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright.

I found my voice in books.

Some of my poems indicate that I am writing while living alone after a split with a woman, and I've had many splits with women. I need solitude more often when I'm not writing than when I am.

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.