Poet Quotes

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well ... [H]e has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, ... thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses ... Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant ... [its] own equivalent of oblivion.

What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music…. And people flock around the poet and say: ‘Sing again soon’ - that is, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.

Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have – and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

To the soul of Clarence Mangan was tied the burning ribbon of Genius.

Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another.

I am as delighted as I am surprised by this enormous honour, which I do know I don’t deserve! Nevertheless, I accept it on behalf of  poetry itself, which is, and always has been, the core of our culture, and in grateful recognition of the truth that poetry, the reading of it, the writing of it, the saying it out loud, the learning of it off by heart, matters deeply to ordinary Scottish people everywhere.

Poets need not
be garlanded;
the poet's head
should be innocent of the leaves of the sweet bay tree,
twisted. All honour goes to poetry.

Lochhead’s work demands hearing, not just reading and watching. As poet, performer and dramatist, Lochhead attends to the nuances of the spoken word in ways which are constantly arresting.

I’m happy to be called a Scottish writer because I’m surprised to find how Scottish it is. I don’t write in standard English. I write in Scots English and sometimes actually in Scots. But it’s a simple thing. It’s defining what you are so that you can more honestly relate with the world.

For some reason ‘a Scottish poet’ sounds as if it’s just something they’re saying about you, whereas ‘a feminist poet’ tells a lot of people not to bother listening. It means to a lot of men that it’s for women only and men shouldn’t be reading it. I wouldn’t mind being called a female poet, because I think my poetry is a pursuit of the feminine.

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

With time, those who listened to me became my readers. They no longer sit in a circle, but apart and one doesn't know anything about the other.

With time, those who listened to me became my readers. They no longer sit in a circle, but apart and one doesn't know anything about the other.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then...I contradict myself. I am large...I contain multitudes.

The Amherst heart is plain and whole and permanent and warm.

Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, Sir.

When it was written, God and Robert Browning knew what it meant; now only God knows.