David Ferry Quotes & Sayings

When you read something, and especially when you're reading compellingly great, that becomes part of your identity, at least while you're reading it. You become changed by reading it. — David Ferry

I don't think in terms of projects. — David Ferry

I've always been - as a teacher, as graduate student, as a student, and I think, really, as a child - I've been interested in poems, but not so much for what the take home pay is, what you might sum up from them in moral or intellectual terms or whatever, but what's in the certain lines and how lines relates to other lines. — David Ferry

How long does a building stand before it falls?
How long does a contract last? How long will brothers

share the inheritance before they quarrel?
How long does hatred, for that matter, last?

Time after time the river has risen and flooded.
The insect leaves the cocoon to live but a minute.

How long is the eye able to look at the sun?
From the very beginning nothing at all has lasted. — David Ferry