Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Libraries are where it all begins. "

Related Quotes:

" I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person. "

" Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor. "

" Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. "

" For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art. "

" It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded. "

" The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something. "

" 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. "

" I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day. "

" I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers. "

" My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends. "

" To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you. "

" What writing does is to reveal. "

" I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about! "

" I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on. "

" It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles. "

" It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing. "

" Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry. "

" Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure. "

" I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them. "

" If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level. "

" I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually. "

" All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself. "

" I write short stories, and I wrote a play. "

" I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us. "

" For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard. "

" The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now. "

" When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings. "

" The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings. "

" Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine. "

" There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry. "