(198 quotes found)
“[Honors: At his funeral, Charlie Chaplin read Dreiser's poem,] The Road I Came. ... American writing before and after his time differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin. He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked and hoped.”
Theodore Dreiser
“Thank goodness for all of the things you are not!Thank goodness you're not something someone forgot,and left all alone in some punkerish placelike a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space.Thats why I say "Duckie!don't grumble! don't stew!some critters are much-much,oh, ever so much-much,so muchly much-much more unlucky than you!”
Dr. Seuss
“It was always a dream of mine. When I was in high school I used to write poems for my friends. And they would give them to their girlfriends or their boyfriends. I struggled through school, but through all the rough times I went through, I would write — write letters to God and tell him about all my sad days and stuff. That's how I began writing. Then I turned to poetry.”
Cynthia Veleno
“O love, O fire! once he drewWith one long kiss my whole soul throughMy lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson
“In a world where cultures and religions are recklessly facing off, Sholeh Wolpé writes careful poems that cast a light on some of what we all hold in common.”
Billy Collins
“Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.”
Muriel Rukeyser
“The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has kinetic force, it sets in motion . . . [ellipsis in source] elements in the reader that would otherwise be stagnant.”
Denise Levertov
“She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.”
William Butler Yeats
“No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.”
Horace
“Another fresh new year is here . . .Another year to live!To banish worry, doubt, and fear,To love and laugh and give!This bright new year is given meTo live each day with zest . . .To daily grow and try to beMy highest and my best!I have the opportunityOnce more to right some wrongs,To pray for peace, to plant a tree,And sing more joyful songs!”
William Arthur Ward
