Louis Dudek Quotes & Sayings

A good reputation is better than fame. — Louis Dudek

Canada is a country where the serious writers are hockey fans and readers of comic books. They don't play chess. — Louis Dudek

Intellectually, most people never wash. They never free their minds of the accumulated rubbish of centuries. — Louis Dudek

The long poem cannot be a digressive, expansive, boring exposition. It is really made of very sharp, Imagistic, quintessential poetic elements. — Louis Dudek

All the ills of mankind spring from belonging to a race, a nation, a city, a group of some kind. The ideal would be to belong to none, and to care for allbut who is capable of that? — Louis Dudek

The residue of religion in my work appears as a modified transcendentalism, and the positivist scientific side of my thought appears as concreteness and realism. The effort to reconcile the two is at the core of all my poetry. — Louis Dudek

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class. — Louis Dudek

In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake. — Louis Dudek

Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative. — Louis Dudek

What is forgiven is usually well remembered. — Louis Dudek

The best live among us in disguise. — Louis Dudek

The twentieth century had a wonderful capacity for seeing nothing as the sum of everything. — Louis Dudek

There is no original sin. It's all been done before. — Louis Dudek

Hatred isgeneralized, but love is for the particular. — Louis Dudek

A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature. — Louis Dudek

Art is anything people do with distinction. — Louis Dudek

Imagination should be integrated with life, not turned into a separate activity, art, that monopolizes one's whole existence. — Louis Dudek