Gore Vidal Quotes

I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

The only nice poets I've ever met were bad poets, and a bad poet is not a poet at all - ergo, I've never met a nice poet.

A poem is a flexible thing, and a poem is a poem.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

Poetry itself hasn't been well served by poets who fled to the margins.

If, at a party, I say I'm a poet, people have a hard time responding, almost as if I'd said I'm a priest.

I want to be a poet and have a chance to explore that and let people know what's really on my mind.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

But there is some way in which poets believe that and this is dangerous, too believe that their calling gives them a certain freedom. A certain freedom to live in a free way.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

I'd kill to be a poet.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

First and foremost, I'm an oral storyteller - I'll make a poetic choice over a grammatical choice every single time.

In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.

A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.