Mark Twain Quotes

I've written poetry most of my life.

To be a poet did not occur to me. It was indeed a threshold guarded by demons.

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well.

Rather than numbing or drowning out the difficult-to-describe but urgently sensed feelings that are part of being human, poetry invites us to tease them out, to draw them into language that is rooted in intricate thought and strange impulse.

Once a year I try writing a poem, usually because I've read some poetry that amazed me and I want to do that.

I guess the thing that I'm most proud of is that I kept on writing poetry. I understand that poetry is sort of the source of everything I do. It's the source of my creativity.

So now I have a collection of poetry by Aaron Neville and I give it to people I want to share it with. I'd like to publish it someday.

Poetry was the first step, and from the age of 18, there was nothing else I wanted to do.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

The other side of it is that, despite all that, people reach out to poetry at the key moments in their lives.

From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

I've always tried to be a poet more than anything else. I mean, professional musicians die.

I shall, in due time, be a Poet.

I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.

Yes, I do write poetry. It's very therapeutic. I'm influenced by Pablo Neruda and Gulzar Saab. It's all very personal.

I feel mushy these days when I think about art and artists and the work that lies ahead for us. There's good work to be done and there's joy to be found in it, I think.

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

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

I felt a longing to compose a radical or root poem that would speak to what has its back turned to me.