Thom Gunn Quotes

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

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

The few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest.

Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.

When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it's happening

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

I used to be on the kitchen floor, crying, wasted and thinking of lyrics. That was the only way I could create - as a tortured artist. I've learned that you can be stable and taking care of yourself and still create beautiful work.

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

I don't consciously use my own life or experience at all.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

All the things worth writing about are outside me. I'm a lens, not a source. And even if it's not always a comfortable journey, it's always a stimulating one.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse.

I believe everything creative is somewhat collaborative.

Sometimes when you're an artist, you need to be in your own head; you need to stay in it to be able to get to a good place.

I'm a thinker and feeler and dreamer and explorer.

I think we writers are very superstitious. We don't know why it's working when it's working, so we attach cause and effect.

Hearing about a visual artist's approach can change the way you think about songwriting.

If I'm astonished by what I've done, then I know I've been somewhere in the making of it but not during the making of it. Only after the fact. If I'm not astonished, then I've failed in the making of it.

I think the best mood for writing is a heavy feeling that's a little bit removed from you. Sometimes I feel very self-indulgent and bratty and ungrateful, and no good music comes out of that. But sometimes I can be really sad or have an excess of feeling yet somehow be able to see the big picture more.

If I'm walking along the street, ideas come. Ideas about things that I'm interested in. I've jotted them down in the past on bits of paper and then, more recently, on apps in my phone. I've always written poetry since I was a kid.