Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.
At the extremity of hardship comes relief and at the tightening of the chains of trials and tribulations comes ease.
There's a very thin line between rock and funk. Funk is like a dirtier blues, and so is rock. They're close cousins.
Tear down the mosque, the temple, everything in sight. But don't break a human heart. For that is where God resides.
What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love?
I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
I would give anything for a female's hand on me tonight. they soften a man and then leave him listening to the rain.
I've found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not.
Close your eyes and look inside, A mirror shines within; To find where you are going, First see where you have been.
Any father whose son raises his hand against him is guilty of having produced a son who raised his hand against him.
I cannot sing the old songs, I sang long years ago, For heart and voice would fail me, And foolish tears would flow.
Do not desert me when I need you most. And if we can't go on together, let's retrace our steps as quickly as we can.
I am made of God, through his Grace. Such that your misery touches me not, Nor does flame of that burning assail me.
Imagination, that dost so abstract us That we are not aware, not even when A thousand trumpets sound about our ears!
Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you.
I have just realized that the stakes are myself I have no other ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
The word is important in Native American tradition. You speak the path on which you walk. Your words make the trail.
When we put words together - adjective with noun, noun with verb, verb with object - we start to talk to each other.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
[On being told party guests were ducking for apples:] There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life.
But oh, San Francisco! It is and has everything - you wouldn't think that such a place as San Francisco could exist.
things which in my mind blossom will stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise appear capable of fragility and indecision
The things are mighty few on earth that wishes can attain. Whate'er we want of any worth, we've got to work to gain.
When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.
Whether we wake or we sleep, Whether we carol or weep, The Sun with his Planets in chime, Marketh the going of Time.
A great many men - some comparatively small men now - if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses.
It is as bad to clip conscience as to clip coin; it is as bad to give a counterfeit statement as a counterfeit bill.
Some people habitually wear sadness, like a garment, and think it a becoming grace. God loves a cheerful worshipper.
Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.
Oft when the white, still dawn lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, I have felt it like a glory in my heart.
There is not one thing that music does which does not say something about how a person should organize himself, too.
Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.
Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.
Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.
I was a go-go dancer at the Dom on East 10th Street in NYC. This was a glittering ballroom over Stanley's Bar. 1965.
Poetry is one of the oldest of all art forms, and one of its powers for shamans and tribal leaders was the mnemonic.
When I was young, I wanted to be the greatest blues singer of all time. I wrecked my education and left home for it.
I'm very proud of the fact that I'm one of Britain's biggest selling poets. That gives me a huge amount of pleasure.
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.
Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
By the needle you shall draw the thread, and by that which is past, see how that which is to come will be drawne on.
Love without end, hath no end, says the Spaniard: (meaning, if it were not begun on particular ends, it would last).
Give not S. Peter so much, to leave Saint Paul nothing. [Give not Saint Peter so much, to leave Saint Paul nothing.]
How wide is all this long pretense! There is in love a sweetness ready penned, Copy out only that, and save expense.
He that lives not well one yeare, sorrowes seven after. [He that lives not well one year sorrows seven years after.]
We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate I's into one worldview.
Great ages of art come only when a widespread creative impulse meets an equally widespread impulse of sympathy . . .
Round my cradle shimmered the last moonbeams of the eighteenth century and the first morning rays of the nineteenth.