George Farquhar Quotes

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

A poet not in love is out at sea; He must have a lay-figure.

To be a poet, it's a challenge to do it in poverty, to do it in wealth. To do it in the academy, to do it in a relationship where you're happy. Everything changes the game. To do it in the awkward state of love, despair, dying. You just have to work it.

One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination. The Divine Vision.

You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.

I learn life from the poets.

If a man walks in beauty, he will create, and when he creates, he prospers.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

Poetry, being supremely useless, by its very existence represents a protest against the so-called 'real world' of busy-ness and moneymaking, so we must embrace, salute and support our poets.

I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

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

I need to be very hungry all the time. I need to be very hungry to write.

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

When you're heartbroken, you're at your most creative - you have to channel all your energies into something else to not think about it. Contentment is a creativity killer, but don't worry - I'm very capable of making myself discontented.

An artist needs to live to create, and to live means to suffer.

I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs.

Very often out of adversity that's when the best work comes.

I learned that creativity is all about being frustrated.

Great trouble breeds great art, I think.

I just want to write a great lyric and write a great song, and everything else is icing on the cake.

There is no editor or agent or person with a sack of money that will magically come down and give you motivation to make your thing.