Poetry Book Quotes & Sayings

I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy. — Anne Stevenson

The question 'Why poetry?' isn't asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed share its origins with other forms of privileged utterance. A somewhat more interesting question would be: "What is the nature of experience, and especially the experience of using language, that calls poetic utterance into existence? What is there about experience that's unutterable?" You can't generalize very usefully about poetry; you can't reduce its nature down to a kernel that underlies all its various incarnations. I guess my internal conversation suggests that if you can't successfully answer the question of "Why poetry?," can't reduce it in the way I think you can't, then maybe that's the strongest evidence that poetry's doing its job; it's creating an essential need and then satisfying it. — Richard Ford

I'd park myself in the bookstore and read with one eye on everyone coming in. I remember reading a Robert Bly book of poetry. — Sally Mann

Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has ever seen. — Vladimir Nabokov

This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time - such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind — Arthur Schopenhauer

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next. — Pat Conroy

The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners' hands. Not I suppose good news in a culture and economy built on obsolescence. But for a book to be loved this way and turned to this way for consolation and intense renewable excitement seems to me a marvel. — Louise Gluck

Janice Gould is one of our best poets. The music of her poetry will delight you, and her gentle courageous accounts of tribal, family, and personal history make this book unforgettable. Doubters and Dreamers is a master-piece. — Leslie Marmon Silko

Her total intellectual association was the Bible, except the talk of Samuel and her children, and to them she did not listen. In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge of peoples and things, her ethics, her morals, and her salvation. She never studied the Bible or inspected it; she just read it. The many places where it seems to refute itself did not confuse her in the least. And finally she came to a point where she knew it so well that she went right on reading it without listening. — John Steinbeck

The habit of grown-ups reading living books and retaining the power to digest them will be lost if we refuse to give a little time for Mother Culture. A wise mother, an admired mother and wife, when asked how, with her weak physical health and many demands on her time, she managed to read so much said, "Besides my Bible, I always keep three books going that are just for me - a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel or one of poetry. I always take up the one I feel fit for. That is the secret: always have something 'going' to grow by. — Karen Andreola

Being able to say something lyrically, to say something that will do more than just be words, is really hard. It's easy to do when you're writing a chapter of a book or writing poetry, but it's really hard to do when you're confined to a melody line. — Nikki Sixx

I find a lot of poetry very disappointing, but I do have poets that I go back to. One book of poetry that I'd like to mention is 'The Exchange' by Sophie Cabot Black. Her poems are difficult without being too difficult. — Billy Collins

I have been writing poetry since 1975. My first poetry book was published in 1986. — Taslima Nasrin

Perhaps it's my destiny to remain a book-keeper for ever and for poetry and literature to remain simply butterflies that alight on my head and merely underline my own ridiculousness by their very beauty. — Fernando Pessoa

Marriage is a book in which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. — Beverley Nichols

[On Jason Mashak's book SALTY AS A LIP, as reviewed in The Prague Post:] Mashak amalgamates various national, historical and religious traditions into a myth-mash that illuminates many sects' fanatical compartmentalizing, and the fact that so many religions and philosophies share similar goals, if not roots. — Stephan Delbos

The Bible is not just one book, but an entire library, with stories, songs, poetry, letters and history, as well as literature that might more obviously qualify as 'religious.' — John Drane

Gabriel Levin's book is a journey through time and through entrenched animosities of the Middle East. What's astonishing and refreshing is his ability to combine the reporter's perspective with a deep knowledge of poetry, including pre-Islamic Arab poems. A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain. — Adam Zagajewski

All of those who ask for, request or demand a title of this book will be asked to return it immediately. — Theodore Ficklestein

Shy Gifts
Shy gifts that come to us from a world that may not
even know we're here. Windfalls, scantlings.
Breaking a bough like breathy flute-notes, a row
of puffed white almond-blossom, the word in hiding
among newsprint that has other news to tell.
In a packed aisle at the supermarket, I catch
the eye of a wordless one-year-old, whale-blue,
unblinking. It looks right through me, recognising
what? Wisely mistrustful but unwisely
impulsive as we are, we take these givings
as ours and meant for us - why else so leap
to receive them? - and go home lighter
of step to the table set, the bed turned down, the book
laid open under the desk-lamp, pages astream
with light like angels' wings, arched for take-off. — David Malouf

Thoughts
thoughts. Are they not mine?
I think, I write, I type.
Thoughts. Are they wise?
Let truth be told in words, compiled together, create a page, a book.
Thoughts. Are they master piece?
Is it a prize winner? ... An Alfred Nobel?
Thoughts. Are they not mine?
Gift of God?
they are not mine. — Edna Stewart

One thing I discovered is that the book world is vast. It's easy to walk around the store - even the room with literature and poetry, where I work most often - and feel overwhelmed. — Kevin Sampsell

She was a poetry book with the wrong dust jacket, shelved in the Reference section. — Joyce Rachelle

Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give you
a closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest,
never forgive a man who wants to save you. — Traci Brimhall

with you, the sense i have lost my place in a book
or simply lost - misplaced the memory
which isn't in the last place where I looked.
a thought that the clouds don't move - that it is we
who thunder past - there it is! an old vacation,
a train ride - sense of immobility.
as sky and forest scroll past in relation,
we are not moved, pretend to love the view,
resort at length to scripted conversation
by a poet-turned-screenwriter who
didn't want this job, career gone grossly wrong
and now drafts action film scripts wholly two-
dimensional unless you choose to don
the 3d glasses that do not stay on - — Joshua Ip

Nobody reads poetry anymore
So who the hell are you
I see bent over this book? — Aleksandar Ristovic

I was a good college kid, all-American and baseball-playing, living in the dorms with a million barbarians. I did not expect to be claimed by Fitzgerald hook, line, and sinker. 'This Side of Paradise' - that sweet, sophomoric pastiche of notes, scenes, poetry, and plays - I felt like he'd written the book just for me. — Ron Carlson

This poem inspired me to write my eBook.

The Miller's Daughter by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It is the miller's daughter,
And she is grown so dear, so dear,
That I would be the jewel
That trembles in her ear;
For hid in ringlets day and night
I'd touch her neck so warm and white. — Ellen Read

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain
There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds
For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged
Where he could lie and gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home. — Wallace Stevens

Poor land, poor land, what do you mean
to the heart that moves in me?
Poor love, poor love, poor wife of mine,
why do you weep so bitterly?

(from Retribution book 2, I) — Alexander Blok

Whatever poetry that was in me was coming out in the form of constructing art books! — Stephen Vincent Benet

The difficulty with poetry is that it doesn't have the life that Shakespeare or Jane Austen have beyond the page. You can't make a costume drama out of it. There's no place for it to go except trapped inside its little book. — Simon Schama

A book,
a book full
of human touches,
of shirts,
a book
without loneliness, with men
and tools,
a book
is victory. — Pablo Neruda

It is time to float on the waters of the night.
Time to wrap my arms around this book
and press it to my chest, life preserver
in a sea of unremarkable men and women,
anonymous faces on the street,
a hundred thousand unalphabetized things,
a million forgotten hours. — Billy Collins

Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better. — David McCullough

I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories. — Bobby McFerrin

To all those whom seek the iron words of the community: if your book is good, it will stand on its own. Be it a short story, a novel, a novella, a chapter book, a poetry book, a chapbook, a manga or a graphic novel ... it will seek reviews by itself. You need to do nothing with it. Do nothing but write. Give up review seeking and focus on writing, for that is what becomes you in the end. — L'Poni Baldwin

The Bible isn't an answer book. It isn't a self-help manual. It isn't a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God's interaction with humanity. — Rachel Held Evans

I'd say that most of these [poems in Jason Mashak's book SALTY AS A LIP] are just straightforward enough, but not entirely explainable or attributable to a single cause/effect, which makes them the kind of poems I want to read many times ... "Salty as a lip" is my favorite. It's so alive: strange and human / earthy and raw. Mysterious but grounded. Mashak has manifested paradox, it seems. Bravo! — Sage Cohen

I am a tale, I am a book, written in different languages and styles

I can't be read, can't be understood,
neither by me nor the greatest of minds

I am too big, I am too small, to be processed or seen by the naked eye

I am too dim, I am too bright, to appear in the shadows or the sunshine. — Sanober Khan

I shall have twenty cats and talk to them all," she said, picking up the volume of poetry. "My cats and I shall have fish every day for dinner." Her imagination taking flight, she finished, dropping the book into the box, "And I shall memorize every line in this book and paint it in calligraphy on my living room walls. — Regina Doman

Dare to Dream
Yes, if you can dare to dream.
Surely you can catch the sunlight's beam.
While all else seems to fail.
Truth shall forever prevail.
(Copyright excerpts from the poem and published poetry book 'From the Silence Within — Madhavi Sood

The rhyme pad was a spell book - it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

You may translate books of science exactly ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written. — Samuel Johnson

Most great books have been about striving in some sense. In a sense, money is the great topic of the novel. You couldn't necessarily say that about poetry. — Chad Harbach

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize. — Oscar Wilde

Every heart must have
its private
bestseller book. — Sanober Khan

'Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?' 'I read it in a book,' said Alice. 'But I had some poetry repeated to me, much easier than that, by - Tweedledee, I think it was.' 'As to poetry, you know,' said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of his great hands, 'I can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes to that - ' 'Oh, it needn't come to that!' Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him from beginning. — Lewis Carroll

Tickle my heart with your pen. Write me for all to read. Bind our love inside a book. Make me your poetry. — N'Zuri Za Austin

Wawashkesh
these apples are
for you,
red on the white
snow,
their cider tang
will find you
in the gray woods.
There is a story
how a snake
offered an apple,
so sweet, so cold,
those bite was
sorrow.

--excerpt from Eric Gadzinski's poem "Wawashkeshgiwis" from The Way North — Ron Riekki

I'm Reginald Clark, I'm afraid of the dark
So please do not close this book on me. — Shel Silverstein

I am NOT an anarchist. Never have been, never will be. Just because Crimethinc put out two of my poetry books, I am labeled everywhere as an anarchist poet. I am a poet, yes. Not an anarchist. I have no formulated political philosophy other than a general feeling of disgust for the majority of the human race. — Raegan Butcher

My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose. — Tao Lin

Although I've written a few (a very few) poems over the years, I am not a natural poet ... and I remain in awe of people who are. The ability to evoke deep emotion, reveal a new facet of the world, or condense an entire story into the limited space and form of a poem (or likewise, of a good song lyric, or the text for a children's picture book) seems like pure magic to me. — Terri Windling

Although Travels with Charley is replete with whimsical vignettes, charming dialogue, and lyrical descriptions of the natural landscape that often rise to the level of poetry, there is beneath its surface a sense of disenchantment that turns, eventually, into barely suppressed anger. Steinbeck seems never quite able to bring himself to say that he was truly and often disgusted by what he saw on his journey, but the reader is left with that impression. One puts down this book aware of how remarkably prophetic it really was, and how America continues to wrestle with the problems raised in its pages. — John Steinbeck

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside. — Rita Dove

As Popa penetrates deeper into his life, with book after book, it begins to look like a Universe passing through a Universe. It is one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made. — Ted Hughes

Edin Viso's poetry and prose bear the obvious marks of dark drama-of a soul variously splayed apart and cinched back together...This is a book of psalms-at once craggy and rough as the Balkan landscape, and sublime as sunrise on the Aegean Sea. There are calluses on the palms, dried blood on the knuckles, and dirt under the fingernails of these pieces. And there is grace...Edin is a poet who knows the value of a blanket, a single orange, a moment shared...He is a man who is unafraid, and who does, in the pages before you, "take off his skin and dance in his bones.". — Stephen T. Berg

With each kiss that we shared we experienced the meaning of love. With the passing glances of passion we surrendered our hearts to the silence of the storm of intoxication. Holding on to each other till the roots of our souls have become entwined in the eternal desire of each other." Poem: "The Silence of Love — Anthony F. Rando

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think. — Emily Dickinson

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel. — Chaim Potok

Theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair — Federico Garcia Lorca

I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art - be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music - enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised. — Mary Ann Shaffer

When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep — W.B.Yeats

Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. — Don Marquis

there are some poems
that we leave behind
some that leave us behind

while some just live
silently
in the heart

crumble, sometimes
dwindle
disappear
die

and are reborn
when you smile again. — Sanober Khan

I'm about 75 pages into a book on poetry. I don't know if anybody wants to read it. It's on any broad variety of subjects. I walk down the street and think of a topic and jot it down and say, 'Okay, that's another one.' They go from the humorous to the serious to every topic imaginable. — Marv Levy

I don't want any money for it," he said. "It's a gift." Scarlett's mouth dropped open. The line was so closely, so carefully drawn where gifts from men were concerned. "Candy and flowers, dear," Ellen had said time and again, "and perhaps a book of poetry or an album or a small bottle of Florida water are the only things a lady may accept from a gentleman. Never, never any expensive gift, even from your fiance. And never any gift of jewelry or wearing apparel, not even gloves or handkerchiefs. Should you accept such gifts, men would know you were no lady and would try to take liberties. — Margaret Mitchell

Although my road to writing seems like it may have come easily, there were a few bumps in that road. I didn't get a lot of encouragement from friends, although my family were great supporters. I also had many ... what you would call "mind-boggling" moments, when I would doubt myself and what I was writing. It has been said that we, ourselves, are our own worst critics.
All the hard work had payed off though, and I created a children's book that I am proud of, and an unforgettable little girl that will touch the hearts of many."-Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

She did not still feel, as I did, the anxiety about a woman who was suffering for love. What did I care about shoes. I still had, in my mind's eye, the most secret stages of that affair of violated trust, passion, poetry that became a book, and it was as if she and I had read a novel together, as if we had seen, there in the back of the shop and not in the parish hall on Sunday, a dramatic film. I — Elena Ferrante

I pulled a book by Robinson Jeffers off the shelf one day. It was powerfully moving. Tears ran down my face. That's when I became a poet. — William Everson

I believe eros dwells in our innermost being as the spirit of creative expression. To me, eros is a great path that we must walk, a song we listen to, a game that we hunt and enjoy, a lesson to learn, a garden where flowers bloom, a prodigious puzzle to solve, a book to read, a chapter to write, and an ocean to swim in. That's what eros is to me. — Salil Jha

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave. — Edward Hirsch

I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. — Jeanette Winterson

I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book. — Kenneth Rexroth

Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going. — James Laughlin

Education does not define you as a "HUMAN BEING" your actions does. — Henry Johnson Jr

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world. — Henry David Thoreau

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans. — Mario Batali

I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought, 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry,' — Jewel

Romeo and Juliet"

The world is full of girls! Of all different kinds and shapes and sizes. They're all big question marks, incognito and unknown. They're a page in a book that's never been written or perhaps yet read. They're a title that's never been chosen, a language that's never been understood. Yet perhaps a treasure that hasn't been discovered.

Will any of this ever be revealed? That is even a bigger question mark. Yet, adventurous men, the brave and the naive ones, still pursue their endeavor toward their unknown dreams.

Will there ever be another Romeo and Juliet?
Or are we all Romeos and Juliets at the end? — Mauro Lannini

Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Angela had never really got on with modern poetry. Even stuff like Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist and the other book. He seemed such a lovely man and she really did try, but it sounded like prose you had to read very slowly. Old stuff she understood. Rum-ti-tum. Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white ... Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack ... Something going all the way back. Memorable words, so you could hand it down the generations. But free verse made her think of free knitting or free juggling. This, for example. She extracted a book at random. Spiders by Stanimir Stoilov, translated by Luke Kennard. She flipped through the pages ... the hatcheries of the moon ... the earth in my father's mouth. — Mark Haddon

My fears are the obvious ones: that marketplace-minded publishers - all four of them - will shy further away from literary fiction, international authors, poetry, and the other marginal but hugely important regions of the book world. — David Edelstein

Words are power. The more words you know and can recognize, use, define, understand, the more power you will have as a human being ... The more language you know, the more likely it is that no one can get over on you.
selection from book: Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community — Quraysh Ali Lansana & Georgia A. Popoff

I chase the wind and get lost in the clouds. I'm sweep into darkness in my search for the light. — Sherman Kennon

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! — Terri Windling

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's all
There was to it. — Mark Strand

As I published books, I realized, that's not really what I want. I don't care about the books as much anymore. I just want to write poetry. — Victoria Chang

She chose books because they never left her lonely the way that Kirk had left her lonely. BEcause company was often nothing of the kind, whereas a good book always was.
She chose books for the smell of fresh-pressed pages, for the yellow-brown musk of library mould, but always for the breathy kiss of paper rustling. She chose books because some of the held prose that made her weep, or poetry that winded her, and words that mae her heart skip beats.
She chose books because some came readey-made with characters that seemed like perfect versions of hrself, all of them little proofs that somehow, somewhere, it might just be possible for her to be better: to be popular, powerful, sexy and smart.
She chose books because they lied to her with more conviction than people ever had. — Dan Micklethwaite

I sent my words out onto the wind
to paths unseen and parts unknown
in hopes people will enjoy
this book of poetic words I've sown — Charles Johnson

Before she knew it, she was just another set of eyes in a dusty attic, waiting for the stairs to creak. — Kelly Moran

Besides, Fi was convinced that instinct could determine a body's literary needs, just as physical cravings pointed to dietary shortfalls. She'd experienced it herself more than once among the library's dense shelves; not knowing what she should read next, she'd wandered, sniffing slightly, palms open. When intuition hit, she felt a sensation she couldn't describe exactly: her hands seemed to know where to go. And when she reached, invariably she found exactly the book she needed at that moment - sometimes fiction, sometimes biography, sometimes a slim volume of obscure poetry — Masha Hamilton

[On Jason Mashak's "I Was Trained to See Shadows", in his poetry book SALTY AS A LIP:] A nice bit of smooth, full-bodied, surreal story telling. I like it. — John Bennett

The bible is history. Remember that it is not a book. It is a library. It contains many kinds of books, letters, songs, and histories, along with the poetry of mythology. We sometimes separate history from mythology, but the bible doesn't. Nor did C. S. Lewis when he wrote, Christianity is myth that is true. — David C. Alves

I don't like to have a calm, orderly, quiet place to work. I often compose while driving, compose in my head. It is true that I wrote my little book, 'The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide,' almost entirely in airplanes and airport departure lounges. — Robert Pinsky

Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note
In me a beauty that was never mine,
How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line ... — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,
but what am I to the truth I feebly utter? — Henry David Thoreau

I remember writing a song when I was about 15. This is the one I can remember. I know I'd been writing poetry for a long time, since I was about eight, but I remember my first one that I put to chords. I was really trying to be like the psychedelic era Beatles, I was obsessed. All I could think about was Beatles and Hendrix. So I tried to write a psychedelic song, and it was the worst. I couldn't even ... If I read it now - I still have the book somewhere - it makes me cringe out loud. It was just about psychedelic stuff. — Ladyhawke