Niels Bohr Quotes

In every culture, in every language, there is expressive play, expressive word play; there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.

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.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

Poetry has become the higher algebra of metaphors.

I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.

I like poems that are little games.

The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.

It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.

As anthropomorphic and surreal people have said my early writing was, to me it was really stock and almost banal in the sense that it was just description, the poetry of comparing: 'Your feet are like A, and your eyes like B.'

I like bringing my poet brain and sensibility to lyrics I write.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

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

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.

Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose.

Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time.

I believe poetry has very little to do with memory.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There's too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliterations. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to absorb it all.

Jigging veins of rhyming mother wits.

Poetry teaches us music, metaphor, condensation and specificity.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.