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" I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine. "

Alice McDermott

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" Without poetry, stories would be told in sepia. "

" The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it. "

" It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither. "

Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. "

Herbert Spencer

" Science is for those who learn, poetry is for those who know. "

" On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there. "

Michael Cunningham

" Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation. "

Robert Fitzgerald

" I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry. "

" Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry. "

" If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem. "

" We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. "

" Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words. "

Tahar Ben Jelloun

" I don't think poetry has a readership anywhere, really, that's that big. "

" Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important. "

" The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful. "

" In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. "

" 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. "

" When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous. "

" A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances. "

" I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, they're kindred spirits. "

J. Carter Brown

" Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose. "

" Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading. "

" The muse, the beloved, and duende are three ways of thinking of what is the source of poetry, and all three seem to me different names or different ways to think about something that is not entirely reasonable, not entirely subject to the will, not entirely rational. "

" My junior high school teacher, Bennie Williams, was really more than a music teacher. She taught us poetry. She helped us put on school shows. She did all these kinds of things to help us stand in each other's shoes, and it was a really powerful time. That's when I discovered that I could sing. "

" Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that. "

" Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else. "

William Hazlitt

" Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry. "

" Read everything. Write all the time. And if you can do anything else that gives you equal pleasure and allows you to sleep soundly at night, do that instead. The writing life is an odd one, to say the least. "

Alice McDermott

" Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture. "

" Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated. "