I'd rather have two good friends, than 500,000 admirers.
E. E. CummingsRead
If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that a true poet values creation over the material aspects of their work.
E. E. Cummings suggests that a genuine poet is less concerned with the tangible outcomes of their art and more focused on the process of creation itself. This highlights the idea that artistic expression and the act of making art are paramount, often transcending the material value or societal expectations associated with it.
Themes
PoetMakingCreationArtValue
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of creativity in education.
More from E. E. Cummings
All quotes βI'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
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It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E. E. CummingsRead
When god decided to invent everything he took one reath bigger than a circustent and everything began
E. E. CummingsRead
The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.
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Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.
E. E. CummingsRead
Similar quotes
We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with necessity or the market, or just, you know, things that take us away from the big questions that we have, those are the things that I think urge us to think about what a poem can offer.
Tracy K. SmithRead
I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves.
Roger DeakinsRead
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
Emily DickinsonRead
If you want to write you should learn the alphabet. You write and write and in the end you hava a beautiful, perfect alphabet. But it isnβt the alphabed that is important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. Photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, but they have no expression.
Andre KerteszRead
I thought I could capture the stories of the city on paper. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city. Horror stories you see. I tell you I didn't have to look far for material. Everywhere I looked, there were stories hidden there in the dark corners. . . . I wrote and still there were more. . . . No one would publish them. 'Too horrible,' they said. 'Sick mind,' they said. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city but the horror is too big and it goes on forever.
Grant MorrisonRead