Annie DillardIf you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's, " In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.
About This Quote
The twenty-one-year-old poet is the one who is really interested in poetry. He doesn't know why he likes it, but he does. He can't explain it, but he knows what he likes about it. He's the real poet because he's too young to understand that poets like poetry.
Source: The Writing Life
Some Similar Quotes
- I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you,...
- I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
- We love the things we love for what they are.
- I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhereI go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my...
- Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
More Quotes By Annie Dillard
- How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
- Spend the afternoon, you can't take it with you.
- You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.
- Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?
- Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?