I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my life–or at least the part my work played in it– I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life. Philip Levine
About This Quote

Being an author is not easy, it is even more difficult than writing a book. Your book should be judged by the quality of the written words, but when you write a book, you are expected to sell it. You need to make an effort to get the sale of your book to others; you need to write in a way that will make your readers want to buy your book. There is no use in writing only about the events in your life, because they are unimportant, uninteresting and unmemorable. The best way to get the attention of others is through interesting characters and settings that can be created in imagination.

Some Similar Quotes
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  2. To be great, be whole; Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into the smallest thing you do. So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor Because it blooms up above. - Fernando Pessoa
  3. The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it. - Jane Kenyon
  4. Truth is a friendthat asks for loyaltyand acceptancethen it enters our heartsdissolving the boundariesfreeing us from lonliness - Nirmala
  5. Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. - Kahlil Gibran
More Quotes By Philip Levine
  1. How weightlesswords are when nothing will do.
  2. Let me begin again as a speckof dust caught in the night windssweeping out to sea. Let me beginthis time knowing the world issalt water and dark clouds, the worldis grinding and sighing all night, and dawncomes slowly, and changes nothing.
  3. I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I could come to understand...
  4. … the river sliding along its banks, darker now than the sky descending a last time to scatter its diamonds into these black waters that contain the day that passed, the night to come. – Excerpt from the poem “The Mercy
  5. Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.
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