Ellen Hopkins Quotes

I believe poetry has very little to do with memory.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

A novelist can get by on story, but the poet has nothing but the words.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

The cliche is dead poetry.

I studied poetry in college and for a year in an MFA program. As time went on, my poems got more and more complicated. What I was really trying to do was tell stories.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I keep trying to define 'poetry,' but it's so difficult.

I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.

Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

I read mostly poetry.

Fiction will always be my greatest love, with poetry close behind.

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

What has always attracted me in life is poetry. Any genre can have poetry. For me, poetry contains truth.

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.

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

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

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.