Art & Creativity Quote by George Murray

Restlessness is being framed here as method, not mood. Murray’s “I guess” looks casual, almost self-effacing, but it slyly lowers the stakes before he makes a bolder claim: the changes aren’t accidental. That little verbal shrug functions like a poet’s version of plausible deniability, a way to admit ambition without sounding programmatic. Then the phrase “element of deliberate change” quietly turns what could be read as inconsistency into craft: reinvention as a chosen discipline.

The second sentence tightens the subtext. “Each of my books has been” is a statement of pattern, not a one-off experiment. It suggests a career built on refusing the safe signature style that publishing and readers often reward. The parenthetical qualifier - “at least from my point of view” - matters. It acknowledges the gap between how artists experience their work (as seismic internal shifts) and how audiences may perceive it (as variations on a brand). That caveat is also a polite preemptive strike against critics: if you don’t see the radical difference, the limitation might be in the viewing angle, not the work.

Contextually, poets are often boxed in by the first book that lands: a tone, a subject, a “voice.” Murray’s line pushes back against that marketplace logic. He’s describing an ethic of self-disruption, where staying recognizable is less important than staying alive to the next risk. The intent isn’t novelty for novelty’s sake; it’s an argument that growth requires rupture, and that the poet’s job includes breaking his own rules before they harden into a cage.