Poetry Quotes

"Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race"

"I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought, 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry,'"

Jewel, Musician

"Marriage - a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose"

Beverley Nichols, Writer

"In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets"

James Broughton, Director

"I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment"

P. J. Harvey, Musician

"My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding"

Harry Mathews, Author

"It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither"

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poet

"When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans"

Mario Batali, Celebrity

"I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time"

Bruce Cockburn, Musician

"Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production"

Joseph Brodsky, Poet

"If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written"

Mark Strand, Poet

"At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music"

Satyajit Ray, Director

"The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry"

Lafcadio Hearn, Author

"Poetry is its own medium; it's very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense, it has particular ways of catching an environment"

Story Musgrave, Astronaut

"He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger"

Salvatore Quasimodo, Author

"All good poetry is forged slowly and patiently, link by link, with sweat and blood and tears"

Lord Alfred Douglas, Poet

"My favorite subject probably was math. I love math. Figures just intrigue me. I was really good at math. English probably was my worst subject. But I used to write a lot of poetry. I used to write poetry all the time"

Herschel Walker, Athlete

"For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men"

Giorgos Seferis, Poet

"I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do"

David Antin, Poet

"Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say"

Compay Segundo, Musician

"I have written some songs, but I would really call what I've done poetry at the end of the day, because I'll sit with my guitar for hours and hours on end for, like, a week and then I won't touch it for a month. I also just have no confidence. And you know what? I don't have time, because I'd rather be doing other things, like knitting"

Amanda Seyfried, Actress

"Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence"

Edmund C. Stedman

"That is what I did with Jack, and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him, and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music"

David Amram, Composer

"It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge"

Brooks Atkinson, Critic

"Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed"

A. R. Ammons, Poet

"Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without"

A. R. Ammons, Poet

"In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous"

Archie Shepp, Musician

"All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet"

Stevie Smith, Poet

"The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology"

Basil Bunting, Poet

"Poetry and prayer are very similar"

Carol Ann Duffy, Poet

"Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry"

Michael Tippett, Composer

"What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry"

Laurie Lee, Poet