Marianne Moore

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

Not till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination"-above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." shall we have it.

In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.

It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic, forever, like the old man of the sea, upon his back.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.

Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.

I, too, dislike it. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.

The sweet air coming into your house on a fine day, from water etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

Truly as the sun can rot or mend, love can make one bestial or make a beast a man.

Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.