Clive James Quotes

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

I used to write poems more when I was younger, but I haven't in a long time. I just write ideas and paragraphs and go from there.

I'm an actress, primarily. I love to write poetry. I've been writing poetry since I was 12 years old.

I was so used to doing art that my fingers were like albino spiders. So it was just natural for me to go to a typewriter and write poetry.

I write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan.

I wrote poetry in middle school and high school and even through college. It was bad. I just don't think I'm very good at writing poetry. I mean, the distillation, I think, is hard for me, but I love poetry.

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

You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.

I like to write poetry.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

My intention is to write poems. That's what I've been doing most of my life.

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

I'm a lousy writer, and it shows when I try to write poetry.

I've written poetry most of my life.

The art of writing, like the art of love, runs all the way from a kind of routine hard to distinguish from piling bricks to a kind of frenzy closely related to delirium tremens.

You could be a music prodigy at age 4, like Mozart, but you can't be a writing prodigy.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet…There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter…And each line has to end with a rigid pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet…But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants…You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.

Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end.

I can't picture myself starting out aiming to do anything or having much of an agenda.I think in writing a poem, I'm making some tonal adjustments, and it took me a long time to allow anything like fun into my poetry.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.