Richard Hugo Quotes & Sayings

Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it, you will. — Richard Hugo

Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat
so accurate, the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside? — Richard Hugo

Believe you and I sing tiny
and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on. — Richard Hugo

Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum:one No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly. Make sure each sentence is at least four words longer or shorter than the one before it. — Richard Hugo

I will garden on the double run,
my rhythm obvious in the ringing rakes,
and trust in fate to keep me poor and kind
and work until my heart is short,
then go out slowly with a feeble grin,
my fingers flexing but my eyes gone gray
from cramps and the lack of oxygen. — Richard Hugo

Rub a half potato on your wart
and wrap it in a damp cloth. Close
your eyes and whirl three times and throw.
Then bury rag and spud exactly where they fall. — Richard Hugo

Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it. — Richard Hugo

You are someone and you have a right to your life. — Richard Hugo

Say nothing and just make music and you'll find plenty to say. — Richard Hugo

I think it's better if you write poems that look like you. — Richard Hugo

A poet is seldom hard up for advice. The worst part of it all is that sometimes the advice is coming from other poets, and they ought to know better. — Richard Hugo

If that's too mythical a tone
consider those who conform and know something's wrong
and need a zany few who won't obey. — Richard Hugo

Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand. When you are writing, glance over your shoulder, and you'll find there is no reader. Just you and the page. Feel lonely? Good! Assuming you can write clear English (or Norwegian) sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.
To write a poem you have to have a streak of arrogance ( ... ) when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, good sense, or narrative development, but because you put it there. You, the same person who said that, also said this. The adhesive force is your way of writing, not sensible connection. — Richard Hugo

I hate that phrase "the real world." Why is an aircraft factory more real than a university? Is it? — Richard Hugo

Think small ... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism. — Richard Hugo

Scholars look for final truths they will never find. Creative writers concern themselves with possibilities that are always there to the receptive. — Richard Hugo

Lovers inside and horses ignoring the lovers. And the creek nearby. The willows. That was the scene. I forget the sky. The sky, let's say, was green and dotted with silly clouds that looked like dimes. Then — Richard Hugo

... I've seen the world tell us with wars and real estate developments and bad politics and odd court decisions that our lives don't matter. That may be because we are too many. Architecture and application form, modern life says that with so many of us we can best survive by ignoring identity and acting as it individual differences do not exist. Maybe the narcissism academics condemn in creative writers is but a last reaching for a kind of personal survival. Anyway, as a sound psychoanalyst once remarked to me dryly, narcissism is difficult to avoid. When we are told in dozens of insidious ways that our lives don't matter, we may be forced to insist, often far too loudly, that they do. — Richard Hugo

I was willingly confused by the times — Richard Hugo

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance. — Richard Hugo

Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work. — Richard Hugo

A good creative-writing teacher can save a good writer a lot of time. — Richard Hugo

An imagined town is at least as real as an actual town. If it isn't, you may be in the wrong business. Our words come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost. It can be hard. It can be worse forty years from now if you feel you could have done it and didn't. It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential. — Richard Hugo

Never has your Buick / found this forward a gear. — Richard Hugo

If you are really strange you are always in enemy territory, and your constant concern is survival. — Richard Hugo

In the world of imagination, all things belong. — Richard Hugo

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone. — Richard Hugo

A creative writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters. — Richard Hugo

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he's done. — Richard Hugo

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance
not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write. — Richard Hugo

Don't write love poems when you're in love. Write them when you're not in love. — Richard Hugo

You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything. — Richard Hugo