Aberjhani Quotes

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.

Why I talk so seriously about art is that art is the only thing that helps people stay alive, and it is the only thing that has allowed people to create joy in this insane, suppressive universe. And art is the only thing that they can't get rid of. They've tried, but ultimately they can't stamp it out.

A good poem is a contribution to reality.

Writing reminds you that you're never alone. Writing and reading is to be optimistic.

The act of making poetry is an act of hope.

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

In the end, we're just showmen. But, I think that it's an important factor. Not to be anything else but clear about that - for me, creativity is an important part of our evolution. Art has probably done more good for the world than war. But they're equally powerful. They both create revolutions.

Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war.

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.

Art is an instrument in the war against the enemy.

Poetry keeps longing alive.

The power of art is as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; it's just where war destroys, art inspires. But in order to inspire, you need to react to it. And, if it doesn't penetrate your mind, you can't react to it.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

We need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration to keep going on the days that your low. We need each other in that way.

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

When they remain in garrison, soldiers are maintained with fear and punishment; when they are then led to war, with hope and reward.

At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier. To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of something beautiful ... The only sort of book I care to write about the war is the sort people will read after the war is over - a century after it is over.

We have art so that we shall not die of reality.

Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense (Spence, Anecdotes

Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.

I'm in show business. I believe in illusion and delusions and in holding aloft the bubble of a dream of some sort because, really, there are lots of reasons to look at the chasm. But art and music, these ineffables, they're just - they're the consolations of what human beings can create and make, and delight is accessible, you know, should you care to find it.

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.

The arts and humanities define who we are as a people. That is their power -- to remind us of what we each have to offer, and what we all have in common. To help us understand our history and imagine our future. To give us hope in the moments of struggle and to bring us together when nothing else will.

Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.