Written Art Quotes

Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink.

The written word is everything.

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

Writing is my primary way of expressing myself.

Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.

Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity.

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

A book makes claims of literary art.

I've written poetry most of my life.

The novel has always been a contradictory form. Here is a long form narrative mainly read originally by consumers who were only newly literate or limited in their literacy. The novel ranked below poetry, essay and history in prestige for a long time.

I think a book is your calling card, your business card.

The book is a form in which some of the greatest masterpieces that mankind has ever achieved are expressed.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

Everyone is their own kind of poet - you can't miss it when their words are written down.

Literature is the immortality of speech.

The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader, and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

The short story has been here and is here and will be here as long as we are.