Dylan Thomas Quotes

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I hold a beast, an angel and a madman within me.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I hold a beast, an
In my Craft or Sullen Art
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
. On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and palms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Dylan Thomas Quotes: In my Craft or Sullen
If I'd been a cowboy, it might've ended well.
Somewhere on the ramble, I'm sure I'd have to sell
My guns along the highway. My coins to the table
To make a gambler's double, I'd double debts to pay.
Prob'ly shrink and slink away, It mightn't've ended well.

What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well.
From August to May
For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris.
I might've called the shanties. From daybreak to storm's set, lines stay Taught, over rhythm unbroken.
But, oh, there's a schism unspoken, a mighty calling of the lee.
An absentminded Pirate, unaccustomed to the sea;
To the land, a traitor. I think it mightn't've ended well.

What might've worked for me? What might've ended well?
Soldier, to bloody sally forth through hell?
Teacher of glorious stories to tell?
Man of gold, or stores to sell?
Lover to a gentle belle?
Maybe a camel;
A seashell.
What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well?
Dylan Thomas Quotes: If I'd been a cowboy,
[I'm]a freak user of words, not a poet.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: [I'm]a freak user of words,
Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Whatever talents I possess may
Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Washington isn't a city, it's
A horrid alcoholic explosion scatters all my good intentions like bits of limbs and clothes over the doorsteps and into the saloon bars of the tawdriest pubs.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: A horrid alcoholic explosion scatters
Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks, china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships, clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers, tu-wit-tuwoo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that cataract their ticks, old time weeping clocks with ebony beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time
without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill, but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime, and tock.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen
Which is the world? Of our two sleepings, which / Shall fall awake when cures and their itch / Raise up this red-eyed earth?
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Which is the world? Of
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The force that through the
And on seesaw Sunday nights, I'd woo who ever I would with my wicked eye!
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And on seesaw Sunday nights,
A truly comic, invented world must live at the same time as the world we live in.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: A truly comic, invented world
Why do men think you can pick love up and re-light it like a candle? Women know when love is over.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Why do men think you
He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: He who seeks rest finds
Cold beer is bottled God.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Cold beer is bottled God.
To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.
Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas.
If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work."
― Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems
Dylan Thomas Quotes: To surrender now is to
Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Chastity prays for me, piety
Join the army and see the next world.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Join the army and see
I sang in my chains like the sea
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I sang in my chains
Life is a terrible thing, thank God.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Life is a terrible thing,
Mr. Kipling stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Mr. Kipling stands for everything
Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels ...
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Beginning with doom in the
Families, like countries, take their prophets unkindly, but a verse-speaker in the house is dishonor to be hooted.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Families, like countries, take their
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: All the Christmases roll down
Our aim for ever must be the pursuit of the knowledge of Man in his entirety. To study the flesh, the skin, the bones, the organs, the nerves of Man, is to equip our minds with a knowledge that will enable us to search beyond the body. The noble profession at whose threshold you stand as neophytes is not an end in itself. The science of Anatomy contributes to the great sum of all Knowledge, which is the Truth: the whole Truth of the Life of Man upon this turning earth. And so: Observe precisely. Record exactly. Neglect nothing. Fear no foe. Never swerve from your purpose. Pay no heed to Safety.
For I believe that all men can be happy and that the good life can be led upon this earth.
I believe that all men must work towards that end.
And I believe that that end justifies any means ... .
Let no scruples stand in the way of the progress of medical science!
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Our aim for ever must
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: All world was one, one
I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies. They are better company and their feelings towards you are always genuine.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I do not need any
In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: In my craft or sullen
And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And I rose<br /> In
To begin at the beginning: It is a spring moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: To begin at the beginning:
I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I have just had eighteen
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: A good poem is a
Hands have not tears to flow.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Hands have not tears to
The function of posterity is to look after itself.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The function of posterity is
Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Don't be too harsh to
I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet-brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I liked the taste of
Do not go gentle into the good night. Old age should burn and rage at close of day.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Do not go gentle into
The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The only sea I saw
These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: These are but dreaming men.
Call me Dolores. Like they do in the stories.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Call me Dolores. Like they
A worm tells summer better than the clock,
The slug's a living calendar of days;
What shall it tell me if a timeless insect
Says the world wears away?
Dylan Thomas Quotes: A worm tells summer better
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: One Christmas was so much
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I have longed to move
I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I know we're not saints
I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
The code of night tapped on my tongue;
What had been one was many sounding minded.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I learnt the verbs of
A hand rules heaven as a hand rules pity;
hands have no tears to flow.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: A hand rules heaven as
What I like to do is treat words as a craftsman does his wood or stone or what-have-you, to hew, carve, mold, coil, polish, and plane them into patterns, sequences, sculptures, fugues of sound expressing some lyrical impulse, some spiritual doubt or conviction, some dimly realized truth I must try to reach and realize.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: What I like to do
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: It is spring, moonless night
This world is half the devil's and my own, / Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl / And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: This world is half the
You must go around the states lecturing to women. And the inoffensive writers who've never dared lecture anyone, let alone women-they are frightened of women, they do not understand women, they write about women as creatures that never existed,
Dylan Thomas Quotes: You must go around the
Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Never be lucid, never state,
Reaching a self freedom is the only object.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Reaching a self freedom is
Come on up, boys
-I'm dead.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Come on up, boys<br />-I'm
There are always Uncles at Christmas.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: There are always Uncles at
And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, Would you like anything to read?
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And when the firemen turned
Speak, then, o body, shout aloud, And break my only mind from chains To go where ploughing's ended.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Speak, then, o body, shout
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And death shall have no
Youth calls to age across the tired years: 'What have you found,' he cries, 'what have you sought? 'What have you found,' age answers through his tears, 'What have you sought.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Youth calls to age across
The only surprising thing about miracles, however small, is that they sometimes happen.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The only surprising thing about
Sleeping as quiet as death, side by wrinkled side, toothless, salt and brown, like two old kippers in a box.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Sleeping as quiet as death,
My birthday began with the water -
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: My birthday began with the
I do not remember-that is the point-the first impulse that pumped and shoved most of the earlier poems along, and they are still too near me, with their vehement beat-pounding black and green rhythms like those of a very young policeman exploding, for me to see the written evidence of it.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I do not remember-that is
Poetry is not the most important thing in life ... I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Poetry is not the most
In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Dylan Thomas Quotes: In the beginning was the
Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Now behind the eyes and
A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill's shoulder.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: A springful of larks in
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables,
the nightjars
Flashing into the dark.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And nightly under the simple
One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: One: I am a Welshman;
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days ...
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And I rose<br>In rainy autumn<br>And
I make one image - though 'make' is not the right word; I let, perhaps, an image be 'made' emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & critical forces I possess - let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I make one image -
The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The best poem is that
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Time passes. Listen. Time passes.<br>Come
Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Somebody's boring me. I think
Thousands of miles,' I said. It's Rhosilli, USA. We're going to camp on a bit of rock that wobbles in the winds.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Thousands of miles,' I said.
If you want a definition of poetry, say: Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing and let it go at that.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: If you want a definition
The crisp path through the field in this December snow, in the deep dark, where we trod the buried grass like ghosts on dry toast.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The crisp path through the
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: When logics die,<br>The secret of
The moment of a miracle is unending lightning ...
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The moment of a miracle
And books which told me everything about the wasp, except why.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And books which told me
Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Especially when the October wind<br>With
In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void ...
Dylan Thomas Quotes: In the beginning was the
This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wind at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: This bread I break was
Tell him I write of worms and corruption, because I like worms and corruption. Tell him I believe in the fundamental wickedness and worthlessness of man, & in the rot in life. Tell him I am all for cancers. And tell him, too, that I loathe poetry. I'd prefer to be an anatomist or the keeper of a morgue any day. Tell him I live exclusively on toenails and rumours. I sleep in a coffin too, and a wormy shroud is my summer suit.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Tell him I write of
Friend, my enemy, I call you out. You, you, you there with a bad thorn in your side. You there, my friend, with a winning air. Who pawned the lie on me when he looked brassly at my shyest secret. With my whole heart under your hammer. That though I loved him for his faults as much as for his good. My friend were an enemy upon stilts with his head in a cunning cloud. -Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Friend, my enemy, I call
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Time held me green and
Poem in October"

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Poem in October
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Mr Pugh: Pigs can't read, my dear.

Mrs Pugh: I know one who can.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Mr Pugh: Pigs can't read,
Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon.
She did not hear him, but stood over his bed and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow.
Hold my hand, he said, and then: why are your putting the sheet over my face?
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Rhianon, he said, hold my
Let the dry eyes perceive
Others betray the lamenting lies of their losses
By the curve of the nude mouth or the laugh up the sleeve.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Let the dry eyes perceive<br>Others
And from the first declension of the flesh
I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
Into the stony idiom of the brain ...
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And from the first declension
Man be my metaphor',
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Man be my metaphor',
Into the sea of yourself like a young dog, and bring out a pearl.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Into the sea of yourself
I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: I used to think that
The dream has sucked the sleeper of his faith
Dylan Thomas Quotes: The dream has sucked the
An ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ... by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was my world.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: An ugly, lovely town ...
Love drips & gathers,
but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores ...
-Thomas, The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Love drips & gathers, <br>but
And time cast forth my mortal creature To drift or drown upon the seas Acquainted with the salt adventure Of tides that never touch the shores. I who was rich was made the richer By sipping at the vine of days.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: And time cast forth my
Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Go on thinking that you
You just wait. I'll sin 'til I blow up!
Dylan Thomas Quotes: You just wait. I'll sin
Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.
Dylan Thomas Quotes: Years and years ago, when
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