Quotes on Writing Poetry

Writing poetry is what I am. I wouldn’t know what else to be.

A banker warned the British poet Robert Graves that one could not grow rich writing poetry. He replied that if there was no money in poetry, there was certainly no poetry in money, and so it was all even.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.

Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?