Robert Fitzgerald Quotes

The Muse gave the Greeks genius and the art of the well-turned phrase.

For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.

You either have an imaginative mind or you don't. All of my writing is God-given. I don't write my stories - they write themselves.

If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry

I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember.

I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.

For a man to become a poet (witness Petrarch and Dante), he must be in love, or miserable.

I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." I told those stories many, many times.

After writing all day I go for a walk and see a piece of architecture i want to photograph and i have to take a picture and later a poem comes in my mind.

Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise.

Everyone has a story, the air is full of stories. The creative process is mysterious, I don't know why it is that suddenly a theme will take hold of me and refuse to leave me in peace until I investigate it and write it.

Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.

I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre.

I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him.

Sometimes a story idea will come to me, and suddenly I've figured out the whole thing, and I feel like I'm collaborating with something other than myself.

For the first rate poet, nothing short of a Queen or a Chimera is adequate for the powers of his praise.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

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

My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.

My ultimate search has been for a muse.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.