Five Poems Quotes & Sayings

I like spending a lot of time fine-tuning all the small characters. I think it really pays off. — Ellen Chenoweth

I trained in every form of dance - started as a tap dancer when I was a kid, then contemporary, ballet, ballroom, everything. Russian, Swedish. — Nigel Lythgoe

I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience. That's why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around. — Willie Nelson

I never go anywhere without my iPod. — Robert Carlyle

The extremists had declared jihad against anyone and anything that challenged their vision of a pure Islamic society, and these artifacts - treatises about logic, astrology, and medicine, paeans to music, poems idealizing romantic love - represented five hundred years of human joy. They celebrated the sensual and the secular, and they bore the explicit message that humanity, as well as God, was capable of creating beauty. They were monumentally subversive. — Joshua Hammer

I love the way he says my name. With the elegance and utmost respect of a King, just before he bows to his Queen. — M.J. Abraham

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations. — Nicole Krauss

One cannot say that a major poet writes better poems than a minor; on the contrary the chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor.... To qualify as major, a poet, it seems to me, must satisfy about three and a half of the following five conditions.

1. He must write a lot.
2. His poems must show a wide range in subject matter and treatment.
3. He must exhibit an unmistakable originality of vision and style.
4. He must be a master of verse technique.
5. In the case of all poets we distinguish between their juvenilia and their mature work, but [the major poet's] process of maturing continues until he dies.... — W. H. Auden

Older boys were allowed to beat younger ones at my 15th-century English boarding school, and every boy had to run a five-mile annual steeplechase through the sludge and rain of an October day, as horses do. We wrote poems in dead languages and recited the Lord's Prayer in Latin every Sunday night. — Pico Iyer

Most government officials are rushing headlong to solve the problems of 50 years ago, with their ears assailed by the sound of snails whizzing by. — Eric Johnston

I love the written word so much, I know it's gonna flow naturally. — Alicia Keys

You're going to have to do better than that if you want to get into my metaphysical pants. — Allison Pang

If I'm very drunk, I can improvise. But generally speaking, no. Generally speaking, almost all of my work is material that was first done on the printed page. And the shorter ones that you might call poems, I had a stretch from '79, '80, for five or six years, where I wrote a lot of poetry as such. Simply because I was asked to. — Richard Meltzer

The story of Issa, the eighteenth-century Haiku poet from Japan. Through a succession of sad events, his wife and all his five children died. Grieving each time, he went to the Zen Master and received the same consolation: "Remember the world is dew." Dew is transient and ephemeral. The sun rises and the dew is gone. So too is suffering and death in this world of illusion, so the mistake is to become too engaged. Remember the world is dew. Be more detached, and transcend the engagement of mourning that prolongs the grief. After one of his children died, Issa went home unconsoled, and wrote one of his most famous poems. Translated into English it reads, The world is dew. The world is dew. And yet. And yet. — Os Guinness

No one could say the stories were useless
for as the tongue clacked
five or forty fingers stitched
corn was grated from the husk
pathwork was pieced
or the darning was done ...
(from 'The Storyteller Poems') — Liz Lochhead

It is only requisite for me to add that the doctrines which I commenced to preach some seven years since are as firmly believed by me as ever; and through persecutions have attended, and the rage and malice of men been heaped upon me, I feel equally as firm in the great and glorious cause as when first I received my mission from the holy messenger. — Oliver Cowdery

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master. — Matsuo Basho

How bad does it have to be before you do something about it? — Amy Jenkins

The goddess smiled. "You are a good hero, Percy Jackson. Not too proud. I like that. But you have much to learn. When Dionysus was made a god, I gave up my throne for him. It was the only way to avoid a civil war among the gods."
"It unbalanced the Council," I remembered. "Suddenly there were seven guys and five girls."
Hestia shrugged. "It was the best solution, not a perfect one. Now I tend the fire. I fade slowly into the background. No one will ever write epic poems about the deeds of Hestia. Most demigods don't even stop to talk to me. But that is no matter. I keep the peace. I yield when necessary. Can you do this? — Rick Riordan

I think that characters who are nice all the time and who you sympathize with can get really boring. — Karin Slaughter

I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it? — Frank O'Hara

I've not been a prolific poet, and it always seemed to me to be a bad idea to feel that you had to produce in order to get ... credits. Production of a collection of poems every three years or every five years, or whatever, looks good, on paper. But it might not be good; it might be writing on a kind of automatic pilot. — James Fenton

We're not aligned with the Holy Spirit until people can behave in any way they choose to, and our own inner peace isn't shaken. There — Marianne Williamson

The attention was flattering. For the first five minutes. Now I know how poems feel. — Margaret Edson

(Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience. — Willie Nelson

I was, I remember, nineteen years old, wrote poems, still wore no proper collar, ran out in the rain and snow, always woke up early in the morning, read Lenau, considered an overcoat a superfluous item, received a monthly salary of one hundred twenty-five francs and didn't know what to do with all that money. — Robert Walser

They do say money is the root of all evil."
I thought that was supposed to be the love of money."
There's neat for you. 'Tis them without it that loves it best. — Jamie O'Neill