Conrad Aiken Quotes

We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.

You can't be too influenced by a great poet. You simply have to live through it.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.

I always turn to Frank O'Hara and David Berman's 'Actual Air,' which came out in 1999. He's a poet I haven't tired of.

I think of the Tamil poet Subrahmanya Bharati every day, and he is an inspiration in my musical creations.

Over many years so many poets have touched my imagination and opened paths for me - it hardly makes sense to list them. I have always read a great deal of poetry.

I remember somebody handed me Siddhartha when I was I think 18, and I started to read it and I just really didn't like it, and I left it and it was just gathering dust for years. Then maybe five years later, the world shook as I read it.

When my own writing needs a perk, I open Zukofsky and read from "A" - particularly sections "22" and "23." It can be opaque, but I love the intensity.

I think for Lev [Grossman], C. S. Lewis was a huge inspiration from his childhood. I know that Brideshead Revisited is a book that he's incredibly found of and he took certain structural influences from that book that he brought into The Magicians.

I left acting for 15 years, and I think it's really nice to have another life. I took too much for granted when I was younger.

I think I'm definitely more open. You know the thing is I wouldn't have said I was closed before, but like, it's the kind of thing that you don't even think of other options. I've been dating black men for really, for like, I don't know, 10 years. You know, I haven't really dated outside of that. Now I think I'm probably am more open to the idea.

A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

I think that one of the questions that I asked of myself in later years was to this point of the political directive.

I have some friends whose sermons are extremely practical - so practical that I can put them right to use. I'm trying to learn how to do that better; but I don't think my approach or style really has changed in these 30 years. Whether that's good or bad I don't know, but I don't think it has.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

I think it's true to say that in 1973 I could read every book of poems that was published in a year, and I did.

As I became very conscious and more aware of things I got very into the beatniks and that kind of stuff. They were very important to me for a few years.

While I'm working on a book, I rarely read anything more than The New York Times. Which may have the long-term effect of flattening my style.

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is.

Every few years something new breaks into the circle of my thoughts.

I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.